Brittani’s Video Party: It’s Okay to be Gay When Hunter Valentine Jumps Rope with Alison Brie

Greetings. This is Brittani’s Video Party, where I bring some of the “best” videos from all over my internet together so we can clap, cry or deconstruct. Have you ever gotten to a video and it already has 33 million views and you wonder where the heck have you been? Well I’m here to help you so that you see it when it only has 32 million views. Aim low, world. Aim low.

Header by Rory Midhani

---

Hunter Valentine released a new video for their song, “The Pulse.” I’m guessing that because of Kiyomi McCloskey’s appearance on The Real L Word some of you are fans of the band or possibly even were before. It’s honestly just a guess. Regardless of your fan status, you can always stand to get further inspiration for your Kiyomi inspired wardrobe. Her lips are very shiny in this video plus they’re all fixing things and handling tools.

Comedian Alana Johnston wants to remind you that it’s ok to be gay with this quick 30 second music video. There’s a keytar and real life queers and a gay ass beat. I know what I’m watching to cheer me up the next time I get harassed on the street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2p6tSh45ws

Dove is once again reminding us that just because the world hates women and wants you to think you’re ugly, you shouldn’t think that about yourself. This is uplifting and such for most people but I’m me so meh. I can’t be the only person who does not at all trust my ability to accurately describe myself. Since I don’t even know what I look like, describing a suspect wouldn’t be good for anyone. As for the exercise from the video, even if I thought someone had crazy eyes or sad cheeks, I wouldn’t describe them like that to some random dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

This woman is being hailed as the world’s best jump roper because that’s what the title of the video is. This is reminiscent of the Jump Rope for the Heart presentations I endured in elementary school. Is that a thing everyone did like D.A.R.E.? Let me know. If I recall, they were doing tricks like this so I guess I’m jaded. I am willing to admit I might have embellished their performances just a bit.

Alison Brie of Community and Mad Men imitates popular internet memes at the hands of Paul F. Tompkins. Not only does she nail Grumpy Cat, her Hadouken is every single thing… including hilarious.

---

If you have a video you think everyone should see, tweet it to @bishilarious for consideration. And of course feel free to post your favorite videos from the week below.

Hunter Valentine’s Vero Sanchez: The Autostraddle Interview

You know Vero Sanchez as the bass player of Hunter Valentine and the Coolest Cucumber on season three of The Real L Word, but did you also know that she began her music career as an 11 year-old mulleted hip-hop artist? Maybe you would’ve, if Vero’s screen time on TRLW hadn’t been limited to interviewing about everyone’s story but her own.

Since the show’s end, for Vero it’s been onward and upward; Hunter Valentine released a new album, Collide & Conquer, toured it in multiple countries, and Vero has some solo projects in the works, like a new album and a clothing line, which will probably be pretty fucking hot.

We caught up with Vero soon after she touched back down in New York, having just wrapped up the Collide & Conquer tour in Japan.

What have you been up to?

I’ve just completed the “Collide & Conquer” tour with Hunter Valentine. Holy Mother of patience! I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s been a drama series within itself. We drove around the US and Canada for the past three months and played about 65 shows including one in Japan! I’d like to consider this a lifetime experience. It was epic and absolutely intense at the same time. Our fans have multiplied enormously and meeting each and everyone of them took a primal role on this tour. I think my face has frozen into a huge smile from all the photographs.

On the downside, we had some complications with our van, gear and Laura’s ankle was injured badly. She taught herself instantly how to play with her left foot and rocked out the majority of the tour this way. It was a challenge not being home with my loved ones when Sandy hit. However, we’ve made it back in one piece and everyone here seems to be stronger than ever. I’m excited to have my own bed and and space for the time being.

It must be tough spending that long on the road, in terms of getting personal space and time. 

There were five of us sharing a van, hotel room, bathroom and stage. I’d like to say it’s “Rock & Roll” but at times I’ve thought to myself, fuck Rock & Roll, now I’m in survival mode! Here are some of my basic thoughts regarding tour: “Hmm..when we stop for gas, do I use this time to go to the restroom or smoke a cigarette. This is my side of the mirror, step the hell back before I smear this on your face. I wish I could turn this ‘Baconater’ into a chimichurri skirt steak with mashed potatoes. I need to fart right now. Should I warn them or see if they notice.” Luckily, they never did.

Let’s talk about The Real L Word for a sec. Did you watch all the episodes?

I don’t have cable but I did manage to watch the whole season. After the second episode I was hooked and became just like every other viewer out there; plastered to the screen crying or laughing. But also being weirded out because I just lived this not long ago and now I was reliving it with the rest of the world.

How did you feel about your own portrayal?

I don’t know why but when there’s a camera rolling, it sometimes helps instigate drama. We are all responsible for every action and word that comes out of our mouth so I kept that in mind. Even when I felt I had nothing interesting to offer I told myself, “It’s okay, just be yourself.” Although I had very little face time, it turned out there was a whole world out there who wanted more of my story. That was well worth the experience of being on a reality TV show. Your recaps labeled me the ‘Coolest Cucumber’ (don’t think I wasn’t paying attention) and because of my portrayal in TRLW, I’ve met so many people that come to me for advice. Good lord, I hope I don’t disappoint.

Oh so you read the Autostraddle recaps, then?

You guys are too much. Good Lord, I just fucking loved them; they’re hilarious. In my opinion, reading the recaps is much more entertaining than watching the TV show.

On TRLW you were kinda this cool cat that popped up every now and then to diffuse band problems, and I was left wanting to know more about you and your life. Were there any parts of your story cut from the show that you wish TRLW would have kept?

There were actually a quite few touching moments throughout filming. I had my mom surprise me from Argentina. She stormed into our rehearsal room, shocking the crap out of me. That was definitely a tear jerker moment considering I hardly ever get to see her. Along with my mother comes another person I rarely get to see, my girlfriend Katie Murphy.

I would have liked to have seen that. How did you meet Katie?

I met her on my first tour with HV last year, The Lady Killer Tour. Her band, Sick of Sarah was one of our touring bandmates and there I was, checking out their hot lead guitar player every night. Had I known she was also checking out HV’s awkward bass player, I would’ve not made an ass of myself with the obvious stage stalking. Little did I know that this tour crush would end up in one of the strongest relationships I’ve ever had. She lives in Minneapolis and I live in New York. She tours, so do I. She’s 29 and I’m… yeah you know. But here’s the thing, we’ve set three phones on fire so far and when we do see each other (once every 3 months) it’s all at the same time familiar and brand new.

TRLW spent a decent amount of time filming when Katie came out for her birthday. We always get nervous seeing each other every first time and having cameras around, didn’t help remove any butterflies. We may not have kept the camera rolling after hours but that part of our relationship we wanted to keep between us. However, all of our hot steamy make-out moments that were cut I’m sure exist somewhere in the archives.

You guys sent us some backstage footage from the Lady Killer tour, it looked like a blast. I recall there being some wrestling…

Yeah the Lady Killer tour was pretty wild. Wrestling after that show seemed to put things into perspective with who’s on top. I was the new girl on tour and although I have a prior undefeated food wrestling belt, I was afraid of tearing another ligament. I believe Laura got a bloody lip that night from Vanity Theft.

You could’ve really messed up your rock stance.

I NEED my rock stance.

Someone else I enjoyed watching on TRLW was Somer. Do you miss playing with her?

I had a connection with Somer and wished things could’ve been different, but her heart was elsewhere. Somer was torn between HV and her own projects, something I definitely can relate to. I also put my own band aside to play bass with HV but I’m slowly working on balancing both bands because they are very meaningful to me.

Tell me about your own band, and music.

I’m a singer-songwriter and play guitar/ukulele with a four-piece band. It all began with hip-hop. I was 11 years old when I wrote my first rap; mullet, flat chested and rocking pink chucks. As years went by I began performing and the music gradually evolved into what I call gypsy folk-rock. Storytelling and writing dark ballads with pretty melodies is mostly my thing. I’ve always been inspired by singer-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Chrissie Hynde and Ray LaMontagne, just to name a few.

I would really love to hear one of the songs where you rap.

Well, I just finished a song called “Girls Tale” and was actually looking for some feedback. Feel free to give me a buzz and I’ll give you a private performance. However, I will be posting it soon on www.reverbnation.com/veromusic.

Have you released any recordings?

In 2007 I released an album named Christopher, under my prior name Mahogany. I soon after changed to “Vero”. Now I’m about to hit the recording studio for my next album which should be released by next fall. Music is pretty much my everything. I will always continue to explore different avenues and that’s what helps me continue to grow as a musician. Bass is by no means my primary instrument, so when I joined HV last fall as their bass player, I guess I sort of surprised myself.

How did that happen?

One day Kiyomi came up to me while I was bartending and asked me to play bass, which totally caught me off guard. I said, “Kiyomi, I don’t play bass” but she insisted that she had a feeling I was the right person for it. She asked me to check out their music as they were going on tour the following month and that totally overwhelmed me. But I was challenged, so I went home fixed up my old shitty bass and practice my ass off. Kiyomi believed in me and kept pushing me hard. She told me that the person I needed to win over was Laura. When the audition day came I had the songs down and I showed Laura my boobs. The rest is history.

And you played on the new album, Collide and Conquer?

Yes, I am thrilled to have collaborated with the girls. We all brought songs to the table and co-wrote other songs together. It was different for me to write songs for somebody else’s voice. When I showed them “Lonely Crusade”, Kiyomi took to it and perfected it with her own style. I was impressed with how hard they worked and how determined they were to make every song the best version of itself. You can still hear the original Hunter Valentine grit but I feel this album has a thicker more mature sound.

What’s your favorite thing about living in New York?

I’m a native New Yorker and live in the East Village. My favorite thing about living here is the community of friends I have. Everyone is a struggling starving “something” but we all have a way of inspiring and helping one another without any hint of competition. It’s a beautiful thing. Well, either that or the hot dogs.

What do you get up to when you’re not doing music and bartending?

Besides talking to my girlfriend and drinking plenty of coffee, I’m working on launching my online clothing & accessory store, Gaucho NYC by summer of 2013. My dad’s a tailor so I’ve always had an anticipated eye for style. I’ve been working on this idea for about three years and a lot of thought has gone into making sure that each piece is one of a kind and ready for stage. I call it the Rock & Roll, Urban Cowgirl look.

I’ve just realized that we’re about to run out of time. Any final thoughts?

A good friend of mine once told me that if you take an orange and roll it into the middle of a street, no one will notice it. But if you take an orange, roll it into the middle of the street and film it, everyone would say, “Hey that’s the orange that I saw on TV.” And that’s what I feel kind of happened. It’s kind of strange how someone can struggle to be a “successful” artist their whole life. They struggle to get any kind of recognition and respect but it doesn’t really matter how old you are, how many people know your full name or how many Facebook likes you get. What matters most is not giving up or comparing yourself to others. Be honest with your art. At the end of the day that’s true success.

Style Thief: How to Dress Like Kiyomi McCloskey From Hunter Valentine

Welcome to the third installment of Style Thief, where I steal the clothes off queer style icons’ backs. Metaphorically, that is. I’ll try figure out just exactly what makes queer style icons tick by breaking down their look into itty bitty bite size pieces. I get a lot of questions about how to look like different celebrities/characters, so I’m finally tackling the question “How the hell do I dress like that?”

Header by Rory Midhani

---

I get a style question about Kiyomi McCloskey basically every day of the week.

It seems that queer women across the land want to capture that rockstar something that makes girls go weak at the knees. Unfortunately Kiyomi’s style is hard to pin down. One day she’s in head to toe menswear and the next she’s wearing a women’s tanktop. It’s not that her look is gender-free, it’s that she embodies androgyny in such a way that she seamlessly blends butch and femme. But you lovable weirdos want to know how to dress like this Hunter Valentine singer/The Real L Word person, and hell, I do too. So with a little help from Kiyomi’s interview at dapperQ we’re going to steal all that black leather right off of her.

From the dapperQ interview:

I hate when people are like… they see your look being one way and then the next day you decide to wear something different, and they’re like “what the hell that’s so weird that’s not her style.” I like to be able to play with different looks and sexualities in fashion on a daily basis in whatever way that I want. So, if I want to wear like… a blazer and heavy eyeliner to counterbalance that and fuck with people then I’m gonna do that. The next day I might wear a leather jacket with a low cut shirt. I’m not afraid to play with my masculine side of my feminine side.

Generally speaking, Kiyomi’s wardrobe is one color: black. While Kiyomi certainly mixes it up with white shirts, silver jewelry and the occasional red hoodie, black is the name of the game. What Kiyomi’s look lacks in color she makes up for in texture. Her wardrobe is made up of studs, distressed leathers, worn-in tees and shiny satins. And of course, that hair.

Let’s start from the bottom. Kiyomi rocks a lot of skinny jeans. Keep in mind, though, that these are more like men’s slim-fit/skinny jeans than women’s jeggings. You want the denim to be thick and supportive instead of thin and elastic. Similarly the leg should be more tapered-straight than it is tapered-tight. It’s like a European men’s jean. So while her jeans have that tight appearance that screams rock star, it’s more Keith Richards than it is Katy Perry.

Next, you probably will need a shirt. Basically Kiyomi wears a couple of different types of shirts. First, she wears a lot of good old fashioned black tank tops. These are sometimes stylized with different graphics or cuts, but frequently they’re just regular black or white ribbed men’s undershirts. I like getting the type that are billed as men’s slim-fit because they are longer than the regular women’s but tighter than most other men’s. This is especially good if you’re a little bustier and need extra length to keep from wearing a belly shirt.

Second, Kiyomi wears a lot of soft black vintage-feel t-shirts. These tend to be solid blacks shirt or have somewhat abstract writing or graphics on them. Remember, artsy and stylized, not a shirt thats says Gap or has the Batman symbol on it. Allsaints is a particularly good company to check out. While you can certainly buy vintage feel tees, you can also make your own easily. Take any cotton shirt you have and soak it for three days in a salt water bath (1/2 cup salter per quart water). This should give it that faded color and super-soft texture you normally only get from wearing a shirt in.

Finally, Kiyomi wears tons and tons of button ups. These are usually either short sleeve or with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. Button-ups are where Kiyomi most often breaks her all black dress code and subs out for a white button-up. One of the things I like best about Kiyomi’s style is she is as unafraid to unbutton her shirt to her navel as she is to button it to the collar. It leaves a lot of room for variety when dealing with many of the same items.

One thing to keep in mind while trying to snatch Kiyomi’s shirt style, is that though she isn’t super busty, she also doesn’t bind flat. Though her look can be adapted for a variety of gender expressions, you don’t need to feel like you have to be bust-free to steal her look. Kiyomi often will go for a masculine cut shirt that low enough to show cleavage or a high cut shirt that still emphasizes her bust. People often get hung-up when they want to wear androgynous clothing but feel like can’t or don’t want to bind down flat enough. Kiyomi is a great example that you don’t need to bind or be extra small busted to rock a very hot center-of-center style.

Now that you have you base of jeans and a shirt, it’s time to really bring Kiyomi’s look home with some layering. The importance of layering is clearly not lost on Kiyomi and she nearly always has an extra layer or two on top. While she has, perhaps, the largest collection of jackets I’ve ever seen, her two most classic looks are either a leather jacket, a vest or suspenders.

When looking for a Kiyomi-inspired leather or pleather jacket, you want something with a ton of distressed texture. Basically you’re looking for a biker jacket. The great thing about textured leather jackets is that they come in a variety of price ranges. Though Kiyomi’s are likely actual leather from Diesel or G-Star, you can find a great cheap pleather jacket a place like Topshop, Forever 21 or even a thrift store. Keep the studs and zippers simple enough that it doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard. Remember we’re trying to play it Kiyomi-cool here.

If a leather jacket is a bit more than you bargained for, Kiyomi also rocks a vest like nobody’s business. While she’s occasionally seen in a denim vest, she is literally the poster child for a white shirt and black suit vest. The thing to keep in mind is that you don’t button the vest. Nope. Not even a little bit, not even at all. The black vest/white shirt look is all about wearing the vest fitted but unbuttoned.

For suspenders you want to go simple or not at all. Think classic black skinny suspenders over a white short sleeve button-up. While funky suspenders are fun, this look is about bringing suspenders back to their classic roots. You can buy suspenders at most department stores, or you can just make your own. Of course, life’s big suspender question is on top of the boobs or to the side. Honestly I say whatever you’re comfortable with. Generally speaking on top only seems to work if you’ve binded or you’ve very small-busted. Aim for a skinnier width strap so that whatever you choose this is less of an issue. For the Style Thief record, Kiyomi seems to wear them to the side.

To accessorize your Kiyomi look you’re going to need some long necklaces. Kiyomi tends to wear a cross, however I’m Jewish and would basically never do that even under any circumstances. You might also have reasons you don’t want to wear a cross. That’s totally fine! There are tons of other long silver chain necklaces you can wear. The best part is, this is the kind of jewelry you can buy for super cheap at Forever 21 or Target.

Finally, there’s that hair. The reason Kiyomi’s hair is so cool is that she can do so many different things with it. It looks drastically different when she spikes it up as it does when she wears it down. An easy option is to bring a picture of Kiyomi into your friendly neighborhood queer hair salon to get that short on the sides long on the top look. The hard part is getting that gravity defying volume. Luckily, this girl seems to know how to do it:

Once you have the clothes and the hair all you need is to slap on some heavy black eyeliner and you’ll be telling girls “I can’t be in a relationship with anybody because of my job” and then changing your mind when you meet someone hotter before you know it!

---

If there’s a queer style icon you’d like to see stripped down in Style Thief, send me an ASS message, ask on my formspring, or tweet me @Ohheyitslizz

Real L Word 309 Recap: Perfect Day For This Show To End With A Bang Bang Bang

Welcome to the ninth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a subversive and edgy late night soft core cable special about four or ten extraordinarily good-looking lesbians who live on one side of the country or the other side and enjoy taking pregnancy tests, drinking/singing, public nudity, trying on wedding dresses, recording insufferable pop music, Tour, puppies, talking about Romi, sitting at round tables with their parents while crying and saying really truly amazing things, such as:

Unfortunately for fans of slow water torture and fortunately for my state of mind, this episode was the very last episode of the season and was therefore jam-packed with trapeeze artists, key lime pie, days-of-the-week underpants, sex swings, spring flings, weddings and evil zombies! Let’s dig into it, shall we?

We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, and are immediately informed via large white block letters that it’s ONE MONTH LATER. Given the byzantine sense of timing employed by this show, “ONE MONTH LATER” is about as meaningless as the lyrics to Dusty & Romi’s first single.

With the wedding merely two days away, Whitney and Sarahara have got heaps of eyebrows to pencil, vows to spell-check, flowers to arrange, small address labels to print and fights to have.

Whitney interviews:

Whitney: “I love that we’re going into our wedding with such harmonious energy. We literally want to kill each other.”

The wedding situation has transformed Whitney into a one-man Pride Comedy Jam. Meanwhile, Sarahara searches for her own limbs and soul beneath a giant sheet of white medical gauze or some lacy thing I can’t understand because I don’t have a gender identity.

Whitney: “I also think it’s weird you’re wearing a veil considering in no way are you virginal, or am I like lifting it like who is this virginal person I will be experiencing for the first time tonight?”
Sara: “You’re the one taking the symbolic part of it for heart. I’m wearing it for a fashion statement.”

This riveting conversation about hymens and fashion is interrupted by a text message from Mr. Whitney:

Oh my goddess, Whitney’s Dad is coming to the wedding! He’s a Hunter Valentine groupie and as soon as he heard that Kiyomi would be there, he booked a ticket. Just kidding! There was a sale on Priceline. Just kidding! Maybe he found a mask to protect him from Ilene Chaiken and no longer fears the camera stealing his soul.

Cut cross-country to the post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland of New York, New York, where The Hunter Valentine Band is eagerly auditioning new hipsters with bangs to fill the void left by Somer’s absent hips and bangs.

Kiyomi: “Just so you know you’re auditioning right now too.”
Vero: “Always auditioning! When am I gonna make the band?“

Basically it’s like American Idol but with only one contestant. Her name is Aimee (not Aimee Mann! I thought that too though, obvs) and she’s an “amazing musician” from Toronto.

Aimee plays bass, I think? But Somer played keyboard. But also I don’t understand music. Three guitars? I assume they’re establishing a mariachi band to play Feliz Compleaños at Chi-Chi’s.

Luckily my G-Chat viewing companion Laneia is totally unhelpful about this:

Laneia: basically the 4th member HAS to have black hair and bangs
Riese: yeah what role is she filling
somer played keyboard
Laneia: i’m confused but also i think you can reach certain notes maybe using a guitar??
ergh idk it’s like watching fish talking about swimming
like, ok
Riese: yeah
like if i wanted to swim
i would swim

The Valentines are impressed with Aimee’s skills, as well as her “energy” and the fact that she seems “positive and comfortable with herself,” which I believe also qualifies her for the Dove Real Beauty© Campaign.

Kiyomi interviews that Aimee’s got touring experience. Somer didn’t have touring experience, apparently, and it “showed in a major way” ’cause Somer didn’t understand the rules of the road, like “thou must suck face with regional strangers” and “that’s not the band’s repair.”

Kiyomi: “How attached to Toronto are you?”
Aimee: “I have a cat, and that’s about it.”

“You nailed it,” says Kiyomi. “Just don’t nail anybody in the band and you’ll be okay.” Hey-o!

Smear across 2,777 miles of vast unexplored swaths of land to sunny yet sketchy Los Angeles, California, where Romi Flinger, as evidenced by the giant chunk of heterosexual lifestyle hair stolen from Kid Rock currently snaking down her back, has left the world of lesbianism forever to worship at the shrine of evil cis-male-privilege and The Dark Knight Dusty Ray.

Romi: “As soon as me and Kelsey’s breakup, pretty much, I am in a relationship with Dusty.”

Suprise!

In merely a month, Dromi and Rusty have fallen in love, which I believe is a similar sensation to falling down an endless tank of rice pudding while wrapped in latex.

Romi: “When I was in the studio I didn’t know what the hell was gonna happen. At all. I didn’t think that we were gonna end up like this again, I mean it had been so long. But there are some people in your life that you meet and it just takes over everything about you. You can’t even control it, even if it’s the wrong time or the wrong place or the wrong situation. It was just inevitable, you can’t put me and Dusty together without us being in love. And we have a history together, it’s not like we just met. And I just wanna like put my heart back into Dusty.”

That’s not all she wants to put back into Dusty HEY-O BUTTSEX!

Romi, having confused “the institution of marriage” with “staying in touch with another human,” explains that they’ve gotta marry or else may lose each other.

Romi: “I don’t ever wanna lose him again and I know that he doesn’t ever wanna lose me again and we spent six years apart and we just are so in love, it’s stupid.”

Laneia: i cannot roll my eyes hard enough
Riese: i had to put in new eyes
mine fell out when i saw romi’s extensions
Laneia: it is stupid
she’s right abt that at least

I wish they’d just gone with something more like this:

Now that they’ve spent two seconds discussing their options, it’s time to call Mom and inform her that Dusty and Romi wanna make this nonsense permanent.

Romi: “Um, Dusty and I are getting married!”
Mom: “Like, you’re kidding right?”
Romi: “No, like we’re gonna get married.”
Mom: “What?”
Romi: “We’re gonna get married!!
Mom: “Dusty.”

Romi hands the phone to The Slice of Man.

Dusty: “We love each other so much.”
Mom: “You’re like serious? I can’t wait. What is happening, like for real, do you know what I’m saying? Marriage is for real.”
Romi: “We’re gonna do it!”
Mom: “You guys seriously, this is a serious thing and you’ve talked about it and you understand the commitment.”
Romi: “Yup!”
Mom: “Okay.”

Well, that was easier than this:

Elsewhere in gorgeous yet often sweltering hot Los Angeles, California, Lamanda are moving objects around in hopes of shipping half of said objects to The Grande Apple and keeping half in the garage. That’s right, they’re moving back to New York City, which means New York won the “New York vs. Los Angeles” Challenge this season. Good work everybody!

Lauren: “I’m so exited to be moving back to new york, it’s just gonna be incredible to like, re-learn the city, go back to my favorite places, go back to my favorite places and do it all with my fabulous girlfriend, Kiyomi.”

Storage Wars would lose their shit over this bondage chair:

Amanda: “I think we need a box just for sex toys.”
Lauren: “Oh no we have some there. It’s too much of a pain to carry back and forth.”

Amanda interviews that despite her plans to return to The City, she and the ex aren’t back in the saddle, ’cause the ex has other ponies to ride. Amanda tells Lauren that she doesn’t want her ex to think she’s coming back to the city just for her.

Amanda: “I don’t wanna give the satisfaction of me thinking that I’m going there to be with her, you know?”
Lauren: “So why don’t you tell her you’re not going, and then go anyway? And if she sees you out, just be like, Hey, I’m visiting.”
Amanda: “Well, that’s really retarded. Why would I do that?”

They’ve got this Paris/Nicole circa Season One of The Simple Life thing going on, these two.

Elsewhere in the bright futurescape of Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sarahara are prepping for their Special Day with Mama and Papa Bettencourt.

Whitney and Sarahara have managed to muster up a large photograph of their photogenic faces for the family to admire.

Sarahara notes that her Mom is looking sad and removed and at first one might assume she’s just depressed that the happy couple didn’t hire Robin Roemer to photograph their wedding, but then one might realize Sarahara’s Mom is just sad about Sarahara being a homo:

Sara: “Mom, can you tell me if you feel better about this wedding?”
Mrs.Sara: “Still, I’m thinking. You don’t need to be married.”
Sara: “Why? I don’t deserve the same rights as my sister or you and Dad, why? My love is not as good as your love?”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah, of course.”
Sara: “Well, then that’s sad for you to say that.”

Mrs.Sara: “But that’s what I’m still thinking, you know.”
Sara: “You want me to be happy because you love me.”
Mrs.Sara: “Yeah I want you to be happy Sara, but you can be happy anyway.”
Sara: “Yeah that makes me happy and I deserve that just like you and everybody else.”

Just imagine if Sara had called to say that she’d gotten back together with Whitney a month ago and they were gonna go get married at Circus Circus! LOL!

Sara interviews that when she’s already so nervous about the wedding it doesn’t help that her Mom would rather be at The Hollywood Wax Museum.

Real L Word 308 Recap: Premonitions Sure Are Dreamy And Disturbing

Hello and welcome to the eighth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour reality program following nine real women who hoard dead cats, use 765 coupons to obtain 675 boxes of Kraft Dinner for 49 cents, are addicted to hillbilly heroin, dress their 4-year-old daughters in sexy cowboy outfits for Lil’ Miss Pageants, compete against a large group of really stupid guys on steroids for the love of one bisexual centerfold, transform a basket filled with spam and garlic cloves into an award-winning dessert and talk about themselves.

Reader, this has been a batshit crazy week of television! First this…

…then this…

… then this…

…and now this!

Let’s get started!

We open in sultry Los Angeles, California, where Whitney, Sarahara and Lauren are imbibing alcoholic beverages in a crazy sexy cool hot nightspot environment called “JUICY CLUB LA,” probably named after Juicy Juice, because isn’t everything.

So, Lauren informs Sarahara and Whitney that she’s taking a red-eye to New York City, which’s insane, because when you take a red-eye you’ve got two choices: 1. drink coffee upon awakening to keep you alert, pleasant and conscious throughout your journey to and within the airport and then face the unseemly side effect of not being able to sleep on the flight, 2. don’t drink coffee upon awakening and feel like holy hell all the way there, inevitably wait for hours as your plane is delayed and delayed, but then sleep peacefully on the flight. I don’t know which one Lauren’s gonna do, especially since instead of talking about this quandary, she’s talking about Kiyomi!

Whitney and Sarahara have a vacation prediction:

Sara: “I feel like Kiyomi has Lauren in the palm of her hand right here just “doo doo doo” hanging out.”

Sara: “You gotta keep em guessing, you know?”
Whitney: “Give ’em little tastes. We gave each other little tastes for three years before we chomped and look at us now, we’re a month away from walking down the aisle!”

Whitney asks Lauren if she’s gonna move to New York and then puts bets on “Kiyomi’s moving here,” ’cause people in Los Angeles always think everybody’s gonna move there. To be fair, it seems like everybody has moved there.

We thus ricochet cross-country to somewhere in Brooklyn during a crucial period in our nation’s history, where Kiyomi and Laura are hitting up a bar to watch Vero scale new heights of sexiness in her surprise role as “bartender.” No wait never mind, they’re there to talk about themselves:

Kiyomi: “The band is really moving at a rapid pace and as soon as the record is out we’re gonna be really busy and we don’t have time to slow down for someone who is sort of wishy washy for where they wanna be in the band.”

Mhm. It’s Somer Fry-day. They’ve decided to boot Somer from the band and they’re gonna tell her at the meeting tomorrow. Vero asks if it’s gonna be an ultimatum, but nope — it’s just gonna be an order.

I’ve been anti-this-conflict since the start ’cause Kiyomi was obnoxious and I love Somer so much, but suddenly this week watching this episode something clicked and I finally “got it” and understood where Kiyomi and Laura are coming from because I realized I could relate their experience to my own experiences here at Autostraddle!  It doesn’t matter how awesome or talented somebody is when you’re doing shit like this, ’cause that’s not all it takes — when you’re in charge of a operation that consumes all your time, has negatively impacted most of your relationships, requires heaps of magical thinking, barely pays the bills if it pays anything at all and is in an industry in which 99% of attempters fail — you come to require so much blind faith that anybody who isn’t stark raving mad about your project keeps you up at night. Everybody at the table needs to have something serious at stake, something that prevents them from leaving. “Blind faith” is right up there with “butter” as one of the primary ingredients for Keeping the Dream Alive Cupcakes. It’s not that Somer hasn’t shown interest in the band or doesn’t add an awesome sound to it, it’s that Somer hasn’t shown borderline-psychotic passion for and obsession with the band, and that’s what the band needs, to be everybody’s unconditional first priority.

Anyhow, then Somer shows up and she and Kiyomi sneak off to a corner for some close-talking.

Kiyomi and Somer discuss the intricacies of their friendship:

Somer: “I just want things between us to be right and they’re not right right now.”

Kiyomi says they’ll chat about it tomorrow because the sun’ll come out tomorrow, so you better hang on ’til tomorrow!

Sidenote: when we got to this part of the episode on Thursday night, I began panicking that Laneia had yet to pop up on G-chat to watch with me.

Riese: LANNEEEIAAAAAAAAAAAA
Laneia: HI
sorry my cable reset itself
fuck
Riese: jeez
Laneia: we’ve been trying to fix it
Riese: you have missed SO MUCH
Laneia: the internet and everything
DAMN IT
what
Riese: no jk, nothing has happened yet
Laneia: i have to call cox and fix it
megan has taken to making me a vodka tonic

We cut to the darkest deepest chambers of Douchebagville, where The King of the Douchebags is entertaining his new suitor, Romi Flinger.

Romi the pop star’s preparing to shoot her first music video by learning how to sing — just kidding! She’s gonna wing it. Anyhow, you know when you’re hugging somebody you wish you were fucking and you are acutely aware of the alignment of your private parts and how every limb in your body can feel every limb in their body and you feel like if you keep hugging like this forever, it’d basically become sex by default? That’s how Dusty and Romi hug.

Laneia: what’s romi wearing
besides a runway of rouge
Riese: a hoodie
and a winter hat
Laneia: is it december there

Romi interviews regarding her Passion for Music:

In addition to always wishing she could be a basketball player, President of the United States, a movie star, Queen of the World, editor of Vogue, One Of Those Bloggers Who Just Writes About Herself All Day In Her Underpants While Bathing in Millions of Google Adsense Dollars And Then Gets a Book Deal, a fashion designer, Starfleet Captain, an FBI agent, a filmmaker or the owner of a Really Cute Bakery, Romi dreams of pop stardom:

Romi: “I love music, I love making songs, I like performing, I love being on stage. I would just love to be able to sing and get paid to do it.”

Romi perches atop the couch singing her new hit single with Dusty. Romi’s reading the lyrics off her Blackberry, which makes me insane ’cause it’s totally unfair that I’ve already accidentally memorized the lyrics to this g-dforsaken song and Romi hasn’t, and it’s HER SONG. I cannot get this shit out of my head.

Romi interviews about her Amazing Artistic Connection to Dusty Ray and what each uber-talented megastar brings to the table besides L.A. Cool and gravity-defying hair:

Romi: “It’s a great team because Dusty is an amazing songwriter who’s very talented, I wanna sing, I can’t write a song to save my life, but guess what I have a really great following and a lot of publicity. So, you give me a song to sing, and I’ll give you people who will listen to it.”

Laneia’s cable is still broken at this point —

Riese: omg i can’t believe romi just said what she said
Laneia: i’m dying
this is really irritating WHAT DOES THE UNIVERSE HAVE AGAINST ME WATCHING THIS GODFORSAKEN SHOW
i’m on hold with cox listening to the musak version of a foreigner song

Basically, Romi and Dusty Ray have now added “being obsessed with each other” to their already arduous schedules “being obsessed with themselves.”

It’s wild, dude! When they jam together, it’s like unicorns having buttsex:

Dusty: “Music is a part of her like it is for me, so when we get together, it’s just like a constant rolling thing, like songs come out, we sing, we mix, we play, and for someone who hasn’t been in the studio before, like she can do anything already, so that’s just like so much fun, you know?”

You guys. EW! Just, ew! My feelings about this scene are best expressed by utilizing the graphics fourfour made when Nicole won America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 5:

+

I mean honestly.

Before departing, Romi and Dusty share yet another sex-hug:

At this point, I would like to quote The Daily Fill Dot Com: “Reality TV stars refuse to learn a very simple lesson: being famous does not mean you can also make music. No amount of money or lip syncing can make up for a complete lack of musical ability, but unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped countless reality stars from trying (and failing) to launch a music career.”

This seems to be what always happens in later seasons of successful reality shows — the “cast member tries to extend their 15 minutes” storyline replaces whatever storylines made that cast member interesting in the first place.

For example:

Now we travel forward in time and emotional resonance to a magical therapist’s office undoubtedly located in or around Los Angeles, California. Charlie’s initial due date is coming up and the girls have feelings.

Laneia: have kacorcy gotten pregnant yet
Riese: they’re in therapy right now
Laneia: i might as well just slam my head against the wall

Cori, much like you and me and everyone we know, has jealousy issues with facebook.

Cori: “Seeing pregnant people on my Facebook, like seeing everybody pregnant and all that, that’s hard… it brings like this ugliness, like it makes me jealous and I’m struggling with that and then I’m mad at myself, and I should be happy for these lucky women, but I’m jealous, and it’s hard.”

The therapist drops a gallon of truth serum onto them — and onto me, too, actually, I mean, this is good advice:

Therapist: “But jealousy really is anger. I mean it brings up your anger that it can’t be you, so what you’re talking about is normal, it’s a feeling that you have to have, just like your sadness.”
Cori: “I try to distract myself a lot, but i’m so angry at my body. “

They want to acknowledge Charlie’s Birth-Day somehow, do something for it. Maybe move towards closure, if there is such a thing when things like this happen.

We starsweep all the way across the United States of America to Brooklyn, New York, where a group of carpet-munching rockstars are assembling for a meeting. Somer’s there first, obviously, with Kiyomi and Laura lagging behind:

The ladies settle in and Laura and Kiyomi sharpen their knives, lick their lips, and dig in:

Kiyomi: “The first thing to talk about that’s the most obvious thing is the elephant in the room, is that you know we decided that we were gonna make a decision whether you were gonna commit to the band or whether the band was gonna commit to you, what the right thing to do was after the tour, at this point we’re feeling like it might not be the right fit because of all the things that we have gone through and I hope that we could figure this out in the most respectful and positive way.”

Damn.

Kiyomi: “At this point in Hunter Valentine there is no room to slow down, eight years in the making and it’s gotta keep going full force.”
Somer: “I don’t wanna slow that down by my decision or my inability to be on tour.”

Kiyomi’s slightly relieved that Somer seems to “get it,” but is also sad. Meanwhile, Somer interviews that much like an attractive well-jawed and deceptively tiny jungle animal, she feels ambushed:

Somer: “It’s not only disappointing and frustrating but a little bit heartbreaking, it felt a little bit like an ambush, and I wish we could’ve had more of a conversation and maybe we could’ve seen what we could fix and move forward and maybe do something awesome together as a band.”

The band agrees that they want Somer recording the album with them but then that’ll be that. And even if Somer wasn’t one hundred percent about the band on the run, it still hurts to have somebody else make that decision for you, and unexpectedly, too.

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Sarahara is tittering about the room in a lacy headscarf, straightening chairs and looking at the wall as Whitney sits on the couch, demonstrating how to finger a detachable vagina I MEAN sticking her finger in and out of her ring, asking Sara if maybe she shouldn’t wear it ’til the ceremony, lest it lodge itself in Sarahara’s cervix, causing her to birth tiny golden dragons.

The topic of this scene is that the wedding’s a month away and they’ve yet to plan anything, which’s befuddling — like really? They haven’t sent out invitations yet? Last week I got an invite to a wedding taking place in the Spring of 2013, for Christ’s sake.

Whitney: “I’m more of a planner, you know Sara kinda likes to fly by the seat of her pants.”

Apparently they’ve yet to invite people, get outfits, taste cake, replace the chandelier, do a BevMo run, shoot me in the face, audition flower girls or find a DJ. West Hollywood is teeming with lesbian DJs so that shouldn’t be a problem. But you know what is a problem? THE FACT THAT “WEDDING PLANNING” HAS RE-EMERGED AS  A “TOPIC” ON THIS SHOW.

Whitney: “Alright — what are you doing?”
Sara: “Baby, I’m getting addresses.”
Whitney: “All I know is that you’re —”
Sara: “Baby, trust me, okay? I’m making headway here.”
Whitney: “I understand you’re making headway except for the fact that all I’m saying is that you’re hopping from Facebook to sending things to color schemes to —”
Sara: “So what? That’s how I work. Is there a particular way you’d like me to do it? How is that, please tell me.”
Whitney: “Yes, organized.”
Sara: “Cool. Don’t piss me off.”

All this thinking has left Sarahara exhausted and Whitney frustrated.

Sara: “Planning a wedding is exhausting and we’ve got tons of work to do.”

Whitney would like Sarahara to do some of this work, and the beat goes on…

Real L Word 307 Recap: Dream Come True, Nightmare Come Soon

Hello and welcome to the seventh recap of the third season of The Real L Word, an hour-long teen drama centered on a tight-knit group of surprisingly artictulate friends growing up in the quaint seaside town of Capeside who carry on passionate teenaged affairs with one another, create terrible self-referential films, escape housefires and deal with Adult Issues like estranged parents, dead parents, divorced parents, re-married parents, sex, teacher-student affairs, mental illness, slut-shaming and homosexuality.

I got the screencaps last night and have been immersed in this delightful program all day! My dearest love, Intern Grace, did not have time to create her clever image titles past the first few scenes, unfortunately, and this recap is kinda late, but it’s here now and that’s all that matters. We’re all here now.

We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, where Whitney and Sarahara are attempting to leave on a jet plane for Connecticut, where Whitney’s family lives, but their bag is overweight! Riveting stuff.

After removing their medium-sized strap-on, their large strap-on, Sarahara’s Ashton-Drake realistic baby doll, the nightstick Whitney uses for cop/robbers role play, the bust of Ilene Chaiken she insists they bring with them everywhere they go, six identical copies of Infinite Jest, Sarahara’s five-gallon Caboodles and a small household cat, they’re good to go!

We cut to Lamanda’s Love Shack, where the Beautiful Party Princess Amazonian Lovergirl Lauren Bedford Russell wakes up to greet the morning but finds herself alone, yearning for Kiyomi’s soft futch touch and the gentle snap of her suspenders as they graze her skin and fall delicately to the floor, where someone recently spilled a beer. What am I even talking about anymore.

Lauren sulks into the kitchen, adorned in her lady-love’s varsity jacket:

Lauren interviews that she’s still thinking about Kiyomi, in case you missed that whole thing from five seconds ago, and Amanda points out that Lauren’s been really wacky lately:

We take a midnight train back to New York City, where Kiyomi is meeting up with Vero The Coolest Cucumber for cornbread, daisies, fight club, ping-pong, arsenic, hemp tattoos, babies and a heart-to-heart.

Obviously Lauren is on Kiyomi’s mind as well:

Kiyomi: “I feel like everything is happening really fast and I’m trying to, you know, take things slow, you know. We’re both really busy people in our careers, just gonna try and see each other when we can and see how it goes.”

Kiyomi interviews that part of her hesitation is because she’s just gotten out of this relationship with Ali, because now that she’s out of it, she can call it a relationship without hyperventilating. Vero is like, dude, she is way into you though:

Vero: “At Dinah Shore she told me something, she said something along the lines of I can see myself just being with her.”
Kiyomi: “She must have been loaded! No, I’m just kidding.”
Vero: “It sounds like she she really digs you.”

Regardless, Kiyomi is k-k-kinda busy:

We then cut back to Lamanda in Los Angeles, still sitting in The Room With The Table In It, still talking about Kiyomi. Lauren points out that perhaps the distance will enable a more mature relationship as they’re unable to hang out all day every day until they lose all their friends and develop a false sense of intimacy and understanding that cannot possibly exist until you’ve known someone for a really long time. But also, she’s never done long distance, and also it’s not a relationship yet but also —

Lauren: “It’s like crazy to talk about it right now, you know?”
Amanda: “Yet you’re like talking about it constantly to the point where I wanna like gouge my eyes out with a fork.”

And SCENE.

Somewhere else on a planet far far away but probably in the Los Angeles Metro Area, it’s Kacy’s Mom’s turn on the Meet The Parents Tour. Kacy interviews that since retiring, her Mom’s become super-awesome: she drives long distances, enjoys golf and is a Great Source of Love and Comfort.

Mom asks how Cori is holding up and Kacy admits that “sometimes I think she’s doing better than I am.”

Kacy: “I think everybody expects to be really gentle with her, and they think I’m fine.”
Mrs.Kacy: “Well, that’s so crappy.”
Kacy: “It is pretty crappy.”
Mrs.Kacy: “You have to tell people, I’m hurting too.”

This show’s done a great job of showing that Kacy is hurting too, but it’s unsurprising that perhaps her friends haven’t noticed it themselves. Often butch or masculine lesbians are handled like men are handled when it comes to emotional situations — expected to be The Protector somehow immune to The Feelings, and probably moreso in this case because it was Cori who carried the baby. But pro tip: butches cry too.

Mrs. Kacy tells Kacy that she had a hard time getting preggers too — ten years, four miscarriages — but she never had to carry the baby to term, like Cori did. Mrs. Kacy says what we’re always thinking every episode every single week, which’s that it’s mega-inspirational to watch how losing Charlie brought KayCor closer together rather than driving them further apart. Kacy says that they’re ready to try again.

It’s true, there’s so much more now. Because when her first sibling is born, Charlie won’t be their last child anymore. She’ll be their first.

Starsweep cross-country to cloudy Connecticut, where Whitney and Sarahara have traveled to participate in the next stop on The Real L Word’s Meet the Parents Coming Out World Tour — this time Grandma’s in the hot seat. She’s 92 years old and also awesome.

Whitney gathers ’round the table with Grandma, Sarahara, Mom, a bottle of wine and captivating conversation:

Whitney interviews that as a kid, when her family split up and money was low, Whitney and her Mom moved in with Grandma so Grandma is really important, just like Sookie Stackhouse’s Gran and Jen Lindley’s Grams.

Whitney’s never directly addressed The Gay Thing with Grandmother and now she’ll be delivering the double-whammy of Gay and Engaged. Whitney’s nervous and taking it slow:

How will Grandmother react?

Will she react like this?

+

I hope it’s not like this:

+

Or like this:

Hopefully it won’t be anything like this, either:

+

Ideally, it will go something like this:

Whitney’s gonna break the big news during dinner, for which she’s invited her childhood pal Tiffany who accidentally steals the scene when she announces during dinner that she and her boyfriend Luigi are getting married.

She’s basically marrying the second-most-popular video game character of all time! Sarahara cannot compete with this holy union!

Despite all the love in the air, Whitney fails to announce her engagement:

Whitney:  “Basically everything is like engagement engaged discuss and I for some reason am not going there at all, I was avoiding it like the plague.”

Cut to somewhere else in the universe, probably Venus or Pluto or The Inferno, where Romi’s meeting up with some alternatively coiffed ladies named Mercado and Erika to discuss her latest adventure in self-referential commerce: Romi’s gonna become a pop star and would like “her own song.”

These chicks are gonna make her music video for this song she hasn’t recorded or heard yet.

At this moment in the recap I would like to introduce a new device, which’s “copy/pasting g-chats I had with (Autostraddle Executive Editor) Laneia during the show.”

Laneia: she looks like a twelve-year-old’s take on what a hip hop starlet would wear
Riese: fur coat
baseball cap
oh she’s practically nicki minaj

Romi’s had just about enough of established musicians like Rihanna and Madonna stealing the stage at her club appearances. Why’s she wasting her time introducing other people’s music when she could be introducing her very own song?

Romi: “I do a lot of club appearances, and I think it would be nice to have something that was mine, now I’m trying to have fun with another creative side of me.”

Romi interviews that her Mom’s ex-girlfriend was a songwriter/producer and used to write songs in the car, which’s basically like Romi growing up on Bob Dylan’s lap. My Mom’s ex-girlfriend was a high school track coach and you don’t see me doing sprints in the backyard, but whatever. Romi also claims to have experienced the completely unique and totally remarkable sensation of wishing she was the one on stage while watching other humans perform musically.

Romi: “My thing to every work opportunity right now is YES.”

It’s also her answer to every ex-boyfriend, coincidentally — Romi plans on laying down her slick beats with none other than the world-famous Dusty Ray of my favorite tumblr, dustyandromi dot tumblr dot com!

Once upon a time, Romi was just the rock star’s girlfriend, drooling in the front row with her Miracle Bra and chunky rings and whiskey flask but we’ve all grown/changed so much since then, haven’t we?

Erika and Mercado are concerned regarding Romi’s mike-holding skills. I’m sure Jay could testify that she’ll do just fine with it.

Romi interviews that she dated Dusty Ray six years ago.

Riese: 6 years ago?
um, i thought that she hadn’t dated men in 8 years
Laneia: she is such a raging twat
Riese: seriously do the people who make this show think we’re total idiots?
i’m not being hyperbolic this is a a real question
she said it’d been eight years since she dated a guy like two episodes ago
Laneia: puppppyyyy

Real L Word Episode 306 Recap: Lost In A Bush (That’s What She Said!)

Hello and welcome to the sixth recap of the third season of Showtime’s hit series, The Real L Word, a 30-minute sitcom about a spunky young girl with pigtails, day-glo leggings and multi-colored outfit situations who is abandoned in a Chicago shopping center by her mother and subsequently adopted by Henry, the kindly manager of the building she’d found to squat in. Eventually she opens a hoppin’ burger establishment at the local mall and throughout the series deals with tough pre-teenage and teenage issues such as buying your first bra, being a tomboy, bullies, getting trapped in an old refrigerator, dodging Child Protective Services and fighting swamp monsters.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m ready to rock this recap! Not really, I’d really rather discuss how the fuck True Blood is gonna wrap up their crazy-ass season in next week’s finale, right? Jesus. Also we interviewed Lauren and Amanda, a.k.a. “Lamanda.”

Anyhow, this week The Real L Word treated us to yet another Dinah Shore-centric hour of sapphic solipsism, in which someone curled up and took a nap on wet asphalt, someone twisted her ankle stepping off a curb, someone passed out on the bathroom floor for three hours mid-day and someone met Miley Cyrus at The Coffee Bean. Hey, who wants to see a sexy picture of Vero?

Sorry about the lateness of this recap, Intern Grace had a special weekend which led to me not getting all the screencaps ’til this morning (Monday), and also because of the cram she didn’t have time to give them all cute names. We apologize and have nothing but love for you and each other forever and ever as so it was written, amen.

We open in the sweltering wildlands of Palm Springs, California, where an enormous group of intoxicated lesbians are enjoying each other’s nipples while rocking softly to the beat of insufferable pop music. Also, Kacy and Cori are re-entering the world they’ve shunned for many moons in the most violent way possible.

DINAH!

Kacy notes that Dinah appears to be “like a club” but “during the day.”

Kacy: “It was a little bit like walking into an alternate universe.”
Cori: “Where men did not exist, and neither did clothes. I felt out of place with my clothes on.”

Tell it like it is, Nikki Weiss:

The two well-insulated ladies make their way through the hordes of women not dressed for winter and are stopped by Real L Word fans who wanna take pictures with The Celesbians Kacy and Cori. Oh wait — is everybody here clear on the definition of “Celesbian”? Let me refresh your memory:

Get it? Okay, good. So, as I was saying, Cori & Kacy are spotted by fans amid the throngs of gyrating g-strings and roped into a Kodak Moment.

And thus KayCor are forced to grapple with the inevitable questions:

Fan #1: “I’m planning on getting pregnant myself.”
Cori: “Really?”
Fan #1: “But like, when we saw that episode with you guys doing like, that thing, like did it work?”
[awkward pause]
Cori: “Uh, it did work. I lost her at five months.”
Fan #1: “Oh G-d, that’s the worst feeling in the world, I can’t imagine.”
Fan #2: “But keep trying.”

Womp womp.

Back in Le Chateau De Lamanda & Whitney & Sarahara, Sara and Lauren are sticking colored pencils into their eyeballs while Amanda informs Lauren that she heard from a girl who heard from another girl who heard from Hunter Valentine that Kiyomi lives with her girlfriend. But Lauren heard from Kiyomi herself that the “thing” with Ali is “sorta done.”

Amanda: “But every girl says that.”
Lauren: “Duh! It’s not like I’m like ‘Oh! I believe you!’“

Amanda won’t let it go and Lauren reassures her that she’ll get this whole fascinating mess cleared up, and Whitney says that as Lauren’s friend she’ll support whatever decision she makes. That’s easy for Whitney to say ’cause unlike Amanda, she hasn’t ever found her arm halfway up Lauren’s vaginal canal… yet.

Everybody laughs and explodes and turns into ghost ninjas.

Meanwhile, Kacy and Cori are still perched precariously on the lips of the mouth of hell, wondering what the hell they’re doing at Dinah Shore.

Kacy: “It’s not that I’m not happy to be here but it’s just like, I would rather be at the hospital, exhausted, knowing that in a month we were gonna have a baby.”
Cori: “I feel it too, it’s hard. We’re not where we’re supposed to be.”
Kacy: “We can get there.”
Cori: “Dinah!”
Kacy: “I wonder if anybody else is having the same conversation that we’re having right now.”
Cori: “I think we’re the biggest Debs here.”

At this point, the couple makes the only decision one can really make under such circumstances:

Kacy: “We’re gonna drink through it.”

Kacy takes one sip of what’s likely a $9 cup of fruit punch and basement-shelf tequila, declares it horrible and then declares herself drunk. Let’s rock!

We then return to the Main Pool Area, where Somer and Donna are smooching, Laura’s carrying Vero around like a baby kangaroo, Sara’s kissing Amanda, and Somer is doing her very best to adapt to her surroundings.

I believe Dinah is especially challenging for New Yorkers, who would never, not ever, not in a million trillion bazillion years, intentionally attend an event of this nature on their home soil.

Based on the six years I lived in New York City, I’d say that many New York lesbians tend to be the type that haven’t bothered buying a swimsuit in five years and only dig out the two-piece when somebody forgets how long it took to get to Coney Island last summer and ropes everyone in to a repeat excursion.

Somer: “Dinah, it’s not normally you know, my bag of tea or whatever — cup of tea? I don’t drink tea.”

But Somer’s happy to be there ’cause of the Hunter Valentine gig. Laura asserts that Hunter Valentine plans on rocking everybody’s bras off, which sounds neat.

Back on The Other Part of The Dinah Pool Party Area, Romi & Kelsey show up and are greeted with open arms by KayCor, who ask how the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game went and Romi explains how, once again, the universe’s axis lay between Romi’s legs and the entire world just revolved around her, being mean, like witches sticking carrots in people’s faces.

Romi: “Lauren signed up to go on a date with [Kelsey].”
[pauses, dramatically]
Romi: “They set us up. I’m like, can you guys get away? Why are you always there? and I just stood there watching the girl that I hate sign up to go on a date with my girlfriend…. it’s just — the nicest way to put it is that they’re very bully-ish.”
Kelsey: “They’re just bullies guys, it’s really sad.”

Romi interviews that she’s so glad Kacy & Cori are at Dinah, ’cause it’s nice to be around a “nice couple.” The implication is that Romi is nice and mature, and all the other girls are bitchy and immature, which is a valid point (about the bitchiness and the immaturity), but also who gives a fuck.

Meanwhile, said bitchy girls are exploring the swelling sexual tension inherent in every group of mojito-scented Dos-Equis-chugging hot lesbians in bikinis!

Lauren: “I don’t know why I’m sucking on Sara’s earlobes but Dinah fever is in me.”

Sara comes in her pants and Whitney’s pumped for “a big orgy later tonight.” The theme will be “The Story of O.”

Whitney: “I’m kinda turned on by the thought of you [Sara] getting it into Amanda, not gonna lie.”

Cori is wasted and stuffs her head into Kacy’s bosom and all is sunshine and beauty.

Cut to a number of hours earlier and later wherein it’s time for Hunter Valentine’s performance! Romi spies the band preparing to perform and is disturbed by their presence.

Romi interviews that she doesn’t know who Hunter Valentine is. I hope they know who Romi is, ’cause she hates it when people don’t know who she is.

Romi: “…based on the fact that they are friends with Lauren and Whitney and Sara, G-d knows what they said about me, so I’m not gonna walk in and watch somebody perform that’s just gonna think I’m like, this bitch.”

One of the many hazards of Being The Center Of the Universe is that at rock concerts, all the musicians are really thinking about is you, because duh, everybody is thinking about you. Like you wish you could just enjoy a performance but the performers are like, obsessed with you. You know? That’s what it’s like to be Romi, the Atlas Of the Modern World.

Romi dramatically yanks Kelsey through the crowd like she’s Justin Bieber and zips into her room, anxious to the max. “Let’s just order,” she says. Music to my ears!

Oh, these are ladies after my own heart, really. I love hotels and 95% of the time would rather be drinking/laughing/smoking with my friends in a hotel room, rolling around on sheets we’re not responsible for laundering, than be outside in the sticky-sweaty sunshine with People Who Enjoy Socializing.

While Romi and Kelsey debate which incidentals they’d like to consume, Hunter Valentine gets ready to rock in the sweltering sunlight of the Dinah mainstage.

The Drunk Lesbians enjoy the show but perhaps nobody’s enjoying the show quite like Lauren’s enjoying the show:

Lauren: “When I first met Kiyomi I thought she was attractive but then they go on stage and they play, she was so hot, and then hearing her voice, it was like, wow.”

Truth: there is nothing sexier than watching your loved one play a musical instrument, which is one of many reasons why all my girlfriends have been excellent instrument-players (the primary reason is “coincidence”). Look, even Amanda likes it:

Or maybe not.

Turns out that seeing Kiyomi rock out with her cock out gets Lauren hard like Swiss Chard:

Whitney: “I could practically see Lauren’s full-on erection for Kiyomi just waving in the wind by the end of the performance she like, blew her load on herself.”

As you’re already aware, Kelsey & Romi have retired to their hotel room, sneakily foiling the CIA-implanted chip in Romi’s left thigh that enables them to follow her with spider trackers.

So, Cori’s trashed. Which is actually a huge relief because she seems happy, at last. All of them do, all four of them.

Kacy: “When Cori gets tipsy, she has an alter ego and uh, Romi gets introduced to partial Coco. Coco At dusk. Kelsey got bent over, Coco style. It’s happened to all of us. She doesn’t really know you unless she’s bent you over and slapped your ass.”

Indeed: Coco Lite, beautifully wasted, thrusts Kelsey into a prone, stomach-to-the-mat position in which Coco Lite can properly smack Kelsey’s ass like she’s ready for some Canyon Yodeling, if you know what I mean.

Romi: “She’s making you a bottom, baby.”

For your reference, this is Coco Full-On:

Then Kacy interviews that “you looked light, for the first time in a long time you just looked light,” and Cori says that she felt light. She felt light!

I think that’s the thing about Dinah — it’s so grotesque and over-the top, and its attendees are so uproariously irresponsible that anything, any kind of behavior at all, is automatically deemed sensible because there’s no way what you’re doing is less acceptable than what anyone else is doing, anywhere. It’s a giant rollocking excuse to just let go of absolutely everything. You can’t feel guilty for kissing a girl you just met or getting super-drunk when two strangers with tequila fumes radiating from their pores are making out on-stage without shirts on while others wrestle topless in a kiddie pool drowning in vegetable oil.

You just let go, and then you feel light. Cori deserves to feel light. So does Kacy. Sookie should give them some light:

The Real L Word’s Lauren and Amanda Have Brains and Beauty: The Autostraddle Interview

My initial impression of Lauren Bedford Russell and Amanda Leigh Dunn was “Hair? HAIR!” There’s something about a girl who knows how to make a frosty ‘do look fabulous, and if you aren’t thinking about dyeing your hair bubblegum pink by the end of this interview, you are not paying attention.

Getting everyone to covet your coif isn’t an easy task, nor is joining the cast of The Real L Word in its third season and managing to win the affections of a very particular fanbase. Lamanda has done both. Entering your television screens/hearts by way of a New York to L.A. crossing, the pair are accomplished ladies with accomplished resumes. Lauren’s jewelry line Lyon features totally beautiful pieces, as well as charity collaborations that put communities first. Amanda is the owner of Cross Street Productions, a marketing and PR firm that has worked with such clients as MTV, Valentino and W Magazine. Amanda has also had a hand in a number of charity organizations, including Cinema For Peace and Music Unites.

Brains and beauty, ladies. And they understand the value of undressing.

Lauren: So this Skype video isn’t actually going to be online?

Kate: No, I’m typing up the interview.

Lauren: So we can take off our clothes.

Kate: Honestly, I’m not even wearing pants right now. But obviously we should keep our clothes on for professionalism. I’m supposed to be a professional.

How did you guys initially get involved in the show?

Lauren: This is always the first question.

Amanda: Lauren’s friend wanted to interview for the show, and she hooked Lauren into it. Lauren was hesitant about it, but then she decided to do it.

Lauren: My friend’s really badass. She’s a really cool chick, a musician, and I said, if you’re gonna do it, then sure, I’ll try out with you. Some factors ended up preventing her from doing it, but she told me to go for it.

Amanda:  Two weeks before I moved out, Lauren found out that she was on the show.

Lauren: I literally found out right before we started filming. It was like, guess what?

Amanda: When I decided to do it with her, it was really funny because they told us they would start filming from the second I land. And I thought, oh, huh.

So you were thrust into it headfirst?

Amanda: Yeah, we just got thrown right in. It was touch down, and go.

Lauren: No time to breathe.

And you had seen the show before, or were aware of it?

Amanda: Didn’t see it, actually.

Lauren: She had never watched it. But don’t tell anyone.

Amanda: Don’t say that!

Lauren: I’m just saying. When she came out to L.A., and that information first came out, I was like, really? Really?

Amanda: No! She asked me if I wanted to do it. I thought if Lauren wants to do it, then it can’t be that bad. But I had to admit that I had never actually watched the show. Our line producer said okay, here you go, better watch these DVDs.

Lauren: I’d watched the first and second season and half of the third. Wait! I watched the first season and half of the second. I totally watched the third season before I filmed it.

What did you think of the first two seasons? Love, hate, indifference?

Lauren: For me, that’s where I saw the opportunity. Without putting anyone down, I thought that they could show a lot more, and a lot more excitement, and a lot more fun. And something real. I don’t see myself as super feminine on the inside. I think I’m feminine on the outside, and that could maybe help the feminine girls to come out. I want to help the girls that I was when I was trying to come out that didn’t see gay girls out there who looked the way I did.

What is it like having reality television cameras in your life all of a sudden?

Amanda: It’s really weird. It’s really funny actually because Lauren and I had made this decision before we started filming. We said we’re not going to drink on camera, we’re not going to be obnoxious, we’re not going to be dramatic, we’re not going to hook up with anybody. We’re just going to showcase our businesses and that’s it. But seriously, after a week of that you realize you would literally blow your brains out if you had to spend four or five months of your life being a robot all the time, not doing anything.

Lauren: What ends up happening, and I think this happened to the other cast members too, you’re so aware of yourself at the beginning that you end up overthinking it.

Amanda: And also the weirdest thing is that sometimes you don’t realize you’re on microphone.

Lauren: At the beginning, I’d be constantly checking for it. If I burped, I’d be like, sorry! And then I’d realize it wasn’t there.

Amanda: Eating and going to the bathroom are the two things that are the most awkward. I would eat a lot. And going to the bathroom – we couldn’t unplug it.

Lauren: At the beginning I was so weirded out that they could hear me peeing, and I kept trying to take the mic off. [The film crew members] were like, stop, you’re going to break your mic. We really don’t care about your pee.

Obviously that didn’t make it on the show. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone pee yet. I’ve seen people in the shower.

Lauren: Oh god, the shower.

Amanda: Let’s not talk about the shower.

How do you feel about the way the show is portraying you so far? You said you came in with a certain idea of how you would act and be seen, and I assume that’s changed. Right now we had a few clips of your business but we’ve seen a lot more about the sexual tension and relationship.

Lauren: It’s probably confusing for everyone. We talk about this a lot, and people are going to watch the show and take away what they want to take away.

Amanda: Here’s what you have to realize: Lauren and I have been friends for years, basically forever. We’ve been through relationships with other people, and we’ve looked out for each other through so many things. There’s never been tension or a power struggle – it’s just us being us. People will either understand that or they won’t. I think people have trouble understanding how a relationship like that could work.

Lauren: This is a moment in time for us, and I don’t know how that will translate on the transcript. It’s interesting to be able to watch it, because we don’t know what’s going on. There’s a lot of clips they’ve only shown as teasers, so I imagine people are like “When are they going to do this? Why haven’t we seen that?” We don’t know where they’re going to put what, so we don’t know how people are taking the versions of us they see on the show.

So what should we know about you guys that The Real L Word leaves out?

Amanda: We have a brain, we are intelligent people.

Lauren: I think they showed a part of my business and what we do in our careers, but there’s only so much they can show. A lot of it won’t make it in. There’s an awesome scene coming up that I hope they can put in, and it’s hard because I don’t know if it’s going to make it on the show or not. We see it when you see it, just a day before, so we are in the same position as you.

Amanda: It’s a surprise.

Lauren: Yeah.

Amanda: I definitely think what they don’t show is that we are really career driven people and that we are very educated. We’re much more involved in the community than they’ve put on the show. I wish they could showcase what I do in the community, what we care about.

Lauren: I hate when people say they’re driven, but that’s actually the best way I can describe myself.

Does your family watch the show?

Lauren: My family is super awesome. My mom is always like, what’s happening next week? And I’m like, er…

Amanda: My family is very conservative and very private. They like that about themselves, so that’s how it is. But my siblings are supportive of it – I’m really close to my brother, he’s fantastic about stuff. I think it’s wild for them, the way the show is showing this side of me. My parents don’t have a problem with me being gay, but it’s the booze and the cattiness and the way you speak around your friends. If anyone films you around your close friends, you’re going to sound different than giving an interview. They’re slowly getting more comfortable with it.

Is there anything you’d consider a highlight this season?

Amanda: Dinah is really funny.

Lauren: Dinah is hilarious.

Amanda: This was my first Dinah!

Lauren: It’s funny, and there’s good moments. It’s probably going to be my favorite part of the season.

Amanda: We’re all there together, the whole East Coast versus West Coast in one place, so you can finally see that dynamic. And you can see all the stupid shit we do.

Have you seen The L Word?

Lauren: Yeah!

Amanda: All of it.

Do you interact with Ilene Chaiken at all?

Amanda: Yeah, she’s really cool.

Lauren: She’s really sweet. Anytime we do something with Showtime, she’s always there with us and so supportive.

Amanda: She gets a really bad rap. Like, they always blame her for everything.

Lauren: No way. Really? I don’t believe it.

Amanda: No, totally.

I have to be honest, people are hard on her.

Lauren: Well, I don’t read that crap. I just look at the person for the person.

Amanda: She’s super concerned with making sure everyone is comfortable and that we’re not being mistreated or misrepresented. She’s actually really nice, and actually gives a shit. She has a really rad idea for the show, and when she thinks about it in her mind, it’s supposed to be a really good thing for the community. She means well. She wants to make a good show that’s representative of the community.

Lauren: And the topics this year are stirring it up.

Amanda: Like men. With women.

Oh yeah, there’s that.

Lauren: Yeah, there’s men on a lesbian show.

Never thought I’d see straight sex on The Real L Word.

Lauren: There you go. It’s stirring things up.

Amanda: All stirred up.

Next: Discussion of scissoring.

Real L Word 305 Recap: I Wasn’t Expecting This To Be So Bitchy

Hello and welcome to the fifth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour family sitcom about a teenage witch who, on her 16th birthday, learns that she has magical powers. Along with her 500-year-old European witch-aunts and her sardonic talking cat, Salem, Sabrina works to master the ancient arts of witchery while keeping her identity a secret and tackling teenage issues like learning how to drive, picking a college, earning your witch’s license and opening a jar of spaghetti sauce.

This week on The Real L Word, we all journeyed to the world famous Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, California, which’s basically a Star Trek Convention but with lesbians.

Sometimes after writing a recap, I’m like, “this shit is fucking hilarious,” but throughout the entire process of writing this recap, I’ve felt like this shit is not remotely funny, I hope next week is more inspiring. I’m sorry I hope you still LOL at least once.  Here’s the thing: nothing’s happening, so everybody’s plotline is just people talking shit about other people. When I read over what I’ve written, I feel like I sound just as petty and bitchy as the show itself. It’s fun to make fun of people acting crazy or weird, but it’s difficult to make fun of people acting bitchy. Does that make sense? THIS IS HARD.

Oh also, to all the people who keep asking why I recap something if I hate it, the answer is that it makes people laugh and feel happy, and I feel like the natural human instinct when you’re told something you do makes people happy, is to do it. Right? If you’re able to. I think that’s what we’re all here to do. Also, it’s the traffic, stupid! It can be a pure motive. We do some things so that we can do some other things. Seriously I’ve recapped four seasons of The L Word, two seasons of Glee and three seasons of The Real L Word and one episode of Two and a Half Men — if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me why I recap a show I hate, I could gather enough dollars to smash together a big dollar ball of dollars, and throw it at your head! I’ve also recapped good shows, like Pretty Little Liars and Skins, that’s a whole different ballgame. Anyhow enough about me, there are all of these slightly more interesting people ready to tell you Their Stories!

Also we made a video, it’s a Whitney Mixter Self-Inquiry Supercut, and it’s kinda amazing.

We open in Silly Los Angeles, California, where Lauren is sitting at the table with a camera crew when Amanda, who has recently dipped her head into a vat of cake batter and then fallen asleep in a walk-in refrigerator, shows up at the thwarted homezone to break some unexpected news to Lauren — she’s getting back together with her ex-girlfriend and possibly re-re-locating to New York City.

Lauren: “I would hope that like, if you’re gonna move back, that you would give me like, advance notice so I can find another roommate and stuff.”
Amanda: [in an “oh, jeez” voice] “Woof…”

Lauren: “What?”
Amanda: “I don’t know, that’s just like so extreme.”

You think that’s extreme, just wait ’til she dares to request that Amanda clean her room before moving out!

Lauren presses for more details, Amanda responds with abstractions and Jesus Christ on a Cracker I always feel like we’re missing a big piece of the Lamanda story! Anyhow, Lauren wants to know when Amanda would potentially move out. Amanda’s not sure:

Amanda interviews that she’s disappointed that Lauren isn’t throwing a Relationship Reunion Pretty Party for her and her ex-girlfriend.

Amanda: “It’s like she’s jealous or something.”

Lauren notes that Amanda lies a lot, and then Amanda’s hair catches on fire and the whole entire house burns down. Just kidding! I was confusing this show with a house fire.

Back in Lovely Long Beach, California, Kelsey and Romi are fudgepacking their clamsacks in preparation for their very first Dinah Shore together as a couple!

It’ll also be their first sober Dinah, a fate I wouldn’t wish upon Maggie Gallagher, as I personally failed to find a way to tolerate Dinah without ingesting at least three drugs and two drinks every 45 minutes. That was our first trip to Dinah. On our second trip to Dinah, I didn’t do drugs or have two drinks every 45 minutes, but shit got real.

Romi: “Dinah Shore is the weekend that all the lesbians from all over the world fly in to party and it does feel a little bit like high school spring break…. it’s really just a place for people to get wasted and fuck each other. Like people break up with their girlfriends just to go to Dinah and fuck other people, and then get back from Dinah Shore and get back with their girlfriend.”

Romi The Sober Grownup explains that she’s attending Dinah Shore for work, because she is Famous and Important:

Romi: “I was invited to host and attend events as a celesbian. A celesbian is a lesbian that’s a celebrity, and they’re very rare. There’s not a whole lot of us. So, I have work to do.”

She’s right, celesbians are very exotic and rare, like Leatherback Sea Turtles and Chinese Alligators.

Romi suggests they try this weekeend to “have fun and like, stay out of as much drama as possible,” ’cause Romi has this routine where every time she goes anywhere, ever, she must first announce her intention to avoid drama and relay her conviction that such avoidance is indeed possible.

Furthermore:

Romi: “We’re sticking together all weekend if you leave me out there alone for the wolves to get me I will fucking murder you.”

Yikes.

Romi interviews that she prays her rascally alkie ex-besties can avoid over-imbibing at Margaritaville and subsequently attacking Romi, ’cause it’s challenging to avoid drive-by attacks when the entire world revolves around you, you know? It’s like you’re everywhere!

Kelsey: “I’m trying to be respectful of Romi and I want to make her happy and if she doesn’t want me around certain people, then I’m not gonna be around certain people. Romi is usually right about certain people, so.”

Whatever you think about these two, Kelsey thinks Romi is the bee’s knees, that much is clear, and it’s kinda adorable.

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles metro area, Kacy and Cori are meeting up with the newly engayged Whitney & Sarahara to discuss Dinah Shore Weekend, which Kacy and Cori are unfortunately planning to attend, escaping their Emily Dickinson lifestyle for something more up Emily Fitch’s alley.

Whitney and Sarahara (who is operating a secret refugee ladder for oppressed termites via the extension cords dangling from each of her tender ears) say they hope KayCor are planning to attend the demented pool party from hell, especially the Dinah Dingbat Dating Game they’ll be hosting.

Whitney: “People are competing to win dates with [Romi and Kelsey.] I don’t know why…”
Sara: [FACE]

Kori: “Are you not talking to Romi anymore?”
Whitney: “No, we have abandoned negative people in our lives, Romi is one of them. She has done shady things —”
Sara: “Even last time and what happened was, we were supposed to be friends at that time and me and Whitney had gotten in a fight but she knew how much I loved Whitney even if we weren’t like perfect, you know? And she made out with her at the pool and then looked at me like — if she could toss me off a cliff and nobody would know about it, she would.”

Although I’d assumed Kacy and Cori’s facial expressions reflected their immersion in this abyss of bratty boredom, it turns out their tentative exhaustion/disapproval is actually a reflection of their affection for Romi Klinger.

Cori: “It’s hard to hear because I love Romi so much. She’s become an actual friend through all of this and she’s constantly checking in with us to see how we’re doing and she’s a great person and to hear anyone talk poorly of anyone I really care about is hard, and I really want to stay neutral — and just they have their own stuff —  but it’s hard because I want to defend her and be like, you’re wrong.”

Kacy and Cori don’t wanna be in the middle of all this, so you know. SCENE.

Back in the deepest depths of depravity vis a vis Brooklyn, Kiyomi and Ali are — surprise — fighting!

Apparently Ali did the horizontal mambo with another lady whilst Kiyomi was playing sweet music for the little children of Texas and Ali lied to Kiyomi about where she met said lady, which’s what Kiyomi is latching onto to have an excuse to be pissed at Ali ’cause Kiyomi is “always honest” which’s really, really, really really not true at all, but whatever, I hate both of these people and hope they claw each other’s eyes out and then move to Newark.

Kiyomi: “I don’t care if you fucking fisted a cat, just tell me the truth, and then I don’t care, do you understand? That’s all I care about.”
Ali: “You’re being so aggressive right now because you’re gonna leave again and you wanna be able to do what you want.”

Ali fights with Kiyomi about how they fight too much, and Kiyomi interviews that her inability to commit is due to a recent breakup with a girlfriend-of-two-years who she was totes in love with and was about to move in with who moved to San Francisco for a new job while Kiyomi was on tour without telling Kiyomi.

Kiyomi: “I don’t wanna do that again, I don’t wanna give myself to someone completely to have them just rip me apart and destroy me.”

They yell at each other’s faces for a bit and Kiyomi finishes packing her stuff and it seems like maybe this thing is over. This terrible not-relationship thing. Kiyomi leaves her keys on Ali’s laptop and heads out.

Cut to the next morning in Brooklyn, where Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport before their flight leaves in an hour. In other words, Somer and Donna are scrambling to pack and get to the airport despite the fact that they are definitely gonna miss their flight.

Donna: “We’ve gotta rush. There’s still a chance.”

Mhm, that’s what I used to tell myself on the subway at 5:55 when I’d just passed Lorimer and had to be in Midtown by 6. “I’m not late… YET.”

Back in Shifty Los Angeles, California, Whitney and Sara are also packing!

For Sara, “packing” involves scampering around in a thong and see-through bra while Whitney interviews about hanging up her Dinah hoe hat. Look out for that shit on ebay!

Hunter Valentine arrives at the Luxurious Los Angeles International Airport — but Somer is nowhere to be found! This’d be a HUGE deal if they had a show tonight or if the bandleader was an obnoxious asshole and unfortunately the latter is in fact the case. Kiyomi interviews that she’s disappointed that they’ve been “given such a great opportunity” but “can’t be professional about it” which’d make sense if the “opportunity” was “getting a ride to Dinah right now” instead of what it actually is, which’s “playing a show tomorrow afternoon, at which Somer will absolutely be present.” So like none of this even makes sense! They should hire a monkey for the cast. Just to scamper around. Or maybe a talking horse?

Laura: “I think we should just leave.”
Kiyomi: “And not wait for Somer?”
Laura: “Nope.”
Vero: “We’re just gonna leave her?”
Kiyomi: “Yup. I’m outta here.”

Kiyomi’s one of those people who looks for reasons to get upset. Like she’s already upset, all the time, so she just wanders the universe with her orb of anger, looking for excuses to share it with the world.

Kiyomi: “I just think it’s one more thing on the scorecard for Somer.”
Vero: “You know what guys, could we not make it a big issue, I swear. ‘Cause I cannot make it a big issue, like the whole keyboard thing on tour.”

Vero interviews:

Vero: “I feel bad that Donna and Somer are not gonna get a ride to Dinah Shore with us, but it’s Kiyomi’s band and she calls the shots.”

I wanna be in Vero’s band where Vero calls the shots! It could be called Hey Vero.

Real L Word 304 Recap: Scissor Sisters Meet Tongue Twisters

Hello and welcome to the fourth recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour sitcom about an intelligent yet mischevious teenage girl struggling to carry entire flower bouquets on her head via Giant Floppy Hats while dealing with an absent mother, working musician father, an allegedly charming dumb jock brother with a lot of hair on his head and a recovering alcoholic older brother. Along with her idiotic-but-hot best friend named after the number of beers her father ingested prior to her conception, she struggles with very special teenage issues like buying tampons, going to second base, peer pressure and marijuana joints.

This week on The Real L Word, everybody cried and everything hurt and I was mostly bored! Are you also bored? Just saying, last week my recap didn’t even get 100 comments, so. Anyhow, I feel like this recap isn’t as funny as usual, but I’d like to blame that on the rain that was falling and mostly on Ilene Chaiken and/or the patriarchy. #BOTP.

Two announcements: we’re raising money and need your support and we interviewed Somer and I think you’ll like it.

We open deep in the bowels of California’s intellectual epicenter: Hollywood, California. Here our newlyengayged couple’s prepping for a trip to San Jose to blindside Sara’s Portuguese parents with news of their impending nuptials.

Sarahara interviews that her parents grew up on a tiny island with one donkey, three dirt roads, a duck pond large enough for only 1.5 ducks and a ramshackle grocery store that only sold rice and wide-ruled notebooks. There were no gay people on this island so therefore Sarahara’s parents know nothing of the gays and their wedded ways.

Whitney’s struggling to select which neutral-toned top, jeans, and stupid hat she’ll don for the big trip:

Whitney: “I can’t with this outfit, I’m not feeling confident —”
Sara: “You look — change your shoes, if that’s the problem —”
Whitney: “— and I need to feel confident because — I think it’s my pants —”
Sara: “No, I love your pants, there’s nothing wrong with your pants.”
Whitney: “I think it’s my shirt. I feel like I wanna look like, presentable.”
Sara: “You look like a 15-year-old little skater boy.”

Whitney interviews that weddings are “a whole thing” in Portugal but Sarahara’s unlikely to fit into her parents’ vision of matrimony ’cause she’s marrying a woman. What woman is she marrying?

We then segue somberly back to The House of Sad and Fog, where Kacy and Cori are lying in bed, as they’ve done every day since their whole world imploded.

Kacy: “Cori and I have gotten used to just being here, with each other. It’s been uh, pretty difficult, damn near impossible, to leave the house.”
Cori: “Our lives have just stopped, and we’re shattered, we’re so broken. I just wanna crawl in a hole and pretend that this isn’t my life.”
Kacy: “We are both broken-hearted and sad, and we are there together, sitting there in the pit of hell, and I wouldn’t wanna be in there with anybody else but her.”

:-(

We cut jarringly cross-country, where Amanda and Lauren have landed in New York City for a few days of fun that’ll ideally cure Amanda’s fatal case of The Homesickness.

The Twirlable Twosome are crashing at a dog-urine-soaked Brooklyn pad inhabited by somebody’s male friend and as Amanda showers, Lauren once again interviews to explain that Amanda and Lauren both had girlfriends when they lived in New York and now they’re both single at the same time and they’ve never been single at the same time before and REALLY DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, I quit.

“This is our first time out in New York, single,” Lauren explains, ’cause their situation requires (apparently) constant explanation. “This is our first time eating pancakes, single,” “This is our first time accidentally taking the N train to Queens, single,” “This is our first time shampooing our dogs, single.”

Amanda says she’s got some errands to run and will be back in an hour. Hopefully she’ll return with the rest of her shirt.

Elsewhere in New York City, Hunter Valentine are returning from Tour!

Kiyomi: “South by Southwest was awesome, we did a really good job, we busted our asses, but there were some altercations, for every show that Somer sounded really good, there was another show that was a complete catastrophe.”

I really wish this show would embrace the ‘show don’t tell’ ethos, but I suppose that’s unlikely when nobody wants your cameras in their venues.

Somer returns to her lady-love, Donna, and her two dogs, one of which appears to have eaten a third dog or maybe just a very large houseplant, and is relieved to descend into her wife’s arms, far away from Kiyomi’s menacing facial expressions and a van that smells “like fish.”

Somer interviews that after being On Tour, she totally understands how Odysseus felt:

Somer: “All I could think about was just being at home with her cuddling in bed, and she’s always there for me to bounce ideas off of and give me a good perspective and those were all things that I really craved while I was on the road.”

I think that’s ultimately the thing, you know? I mean, there’s sex. You miss the sex when you’re away, but more than that you miss the person who has been processing all your feelings with you for howevermany years, the person who gets you and usually agrees with you and can tell you if you’re being stupid or the other guy is being stupid. It’s the only situation in which life partner seems like the most accurate term to describe the person you miss and love.

Somer explains that when you’re out there on the road with a vicious womanbeast, Smee and Vero The Coolest Cucumber, everything’s just “naked and bloody” and nobody is polite and it’s hard. Somer and Donna have lots of processing to do about whether or not Somer should stay in Hunter Valentine.

We cut cross-country to Sunny San Jose, California, the city Kayak always suggests I fly out of when I’m hunting for cheap plane tickets. What Kayak doesn’t know is that I don’t have a car, so like, I can’t just go to San Jose on a whim in my Lexus with my fiancé or something, like these guys:

Sarahara says they’ve got news. Mãe and Pai strike out once with “you’re moving to San Jose,” and then again with “you’re pregnant.” The latter prediction is totally ominous, obviously. They’ve got no idea what’s about to happen.

In a surprisingly hilarious twist of fate, Whitney’s got no fucking clue what’s going on ’cause they’re all talking in Portuguese, forcing Whit to simmer in nervousness while chugging red table wine and laughing politely at what seem to be the appropriate moments.

Sara: “I’m nervous.”
Mrs. Sara [in Portuguese]: “What is it? You’re not expecting a baby, are you?”
Sara [in Portuguese] : “She asked me to marry her.”

Whitney, who — keep in mind — has no idea what’s been said, smiles nervously as Mr. Sara chuckles benevolently and Mrs. Sara’s face crumples and it’s really sad. You can’t even be mad at Mrs. Sara, because you can see her entire vision of her daughter’s future dissolve into a big black nothing and you can see that she is mourning this life and probably wishes she could mourn it off-camera. Sometimes it’s important to take a step back from our knee-jerk self-righteous indignation at anybody who doesn’t embrace our sexuality and recognize that “accepting” doesn’t have to mean “immediately embracing.”

Sara: “Do you guys love me?”
Mrs. Sara: “I love you very much Sara —” [stumbles on her words]
Sara: “Are you sad?”
Mrs. Sara: “Well.” [pauses] “Old-fashioned.” [looks down]
Sara: “What do you think? What does that mean?”

Whitney interviews:

Whitney: “So yeah I’m not 100% well-versed on Portugese but I’m pretty well versed on the look of shock and dismay and tears. That’s a dead giveaway. She’s not 100% happy about this.”

Sara sort of purrs and hugs her Mom and tells her she loves her over and over as her mother stares at her fork and her lap and everything but Whitney, who at least shares a kind broment with Mr. Sara.

Mr. Sara: “I love my daughter, and I will do everything for her to be happy. And we really like Whitney and she’s a very nice person.”

Some Sadistic fuck takes this opportunity to interview Mrs. Sara, who clearly needs more emotional support than an exploitative television camera could offer:

Mrs. Sara: “This is a big surprise for me. It’s not easy. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m saying this but it’s not easy.” [starts sobbing]

Mrs. Sara: “I never believe in gay marriage. I thought marrying is for woman and a man. Plus it’s not only me, really I don’t believe my family is going to the wedding. They all love me very much. Very much. very close family. But I don’t think they’d do that, even for me.” [starts crying again]

Back in New York Shitty, Lauren’s peeved ’cause Amanda said she’d be back in an hour and now it’s been three hours and she still isn’t back!

I believe we’re being set up to think Amanda is riding somebody’s hobby horse in a secret playpen and Lauren’s being overly possessive but seriously guys, don’t tell somebody to expect you in an hour and then go MIA, it’s ultra-rude, especially if you’re allegedly on a vacation together and have plans later.

Evil Cylon Somer Bingham Infiltrates The Real L Word: The Autostraddle Interview

My introduction to musician slash reality television superstar Somer Bingham was in July 2011, when I received an email suggesting that I would really dig the band Clinical Trials. Somer and her music — which was described as “thrashy all-female electro grunge rock with a side of angst” — quickly became my new favorite things.

Almost one year later, the announcement was made that Somer had joined the cast of Autostraddle’s favorite lesbian reality television program, The Real L Word. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity to call her up and ask, “oh God, WHY?”

Here’s the thing: Somer gets it. Like, she’s in on the joke too, and anybody who follows her on twitter knows that from her self-deprecating episode live-tweeting and overall sense of humor about the whole project.

After dealing with a phone speaker blow-out (which, fyi, an empathetic Somer offered to help fix) and being read the world’s most polite riot act by Showtime PR, we settled in for a deep and meaningful discussion about music and TRLW that ended up getting totally de-railed.

What were you thinking when you signed on to do The Real L Word?

To be honest with you, I wasn’t all that interested on being on the show. In fact I had a couple of conversations with Vero (Hunter Valentine) when trying to decide what to do, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to be on reality television or if I wanted to let people into my life. I’m a musician, not a TV person, and so I had a lot of hesitation.

Also I was in this in-between period with Hunter Valentine, we were still trying to figure things out and it wasn’t really my decision whether the band was going to be in it or not, so I just went along for the ride. Honestly, it’s a lot harder to say no to something than it is to say yes. If you say yes then maybe you’ll wonder if you made the right choice and have to live with regret, but if you say no then you’ll always have to wonder.

So when did the decision happen?

It happened right in the first few months of us trying to work together. Kiyomi and I were already friends and she asked me to help her write songs for their new album, which sounded like fun. That led to an invitation to go to Toronto to record it, and it was right around that time the auditions were happening. Clearly Hunter Valentine did end up being cast and the story was going to be about recording the album and going on tour.

What has it been like watching your life play out on screen? Is that weird for you?

You know what’s the weirdest thing? Reading Autostraddle recaps. I read them and I’m like, “Oh wait, that’s me! They’re talking about my keyboard!”

I’m actually more nervous to be talking to Autostraddle because you guys are smart. I caffeinated myself in preparation because I don’t want to be too slow or ridiculous. I mean, a little bit of ridiculous is fine, if it’s funny. If we can pull off something that is a little ridiculous and a little funny and a little witty then I’ll be super stoked.

Way to put on the pressure. Had you seen The Real L Word? Did you know what you were getting yourself into?

I had no idea! I watched part of an episode once because one of my friends was obsessed – it was the scene with the creamed corn and the strap on scene and I was like, “Wow! This is not good television!”

I’m not a big reality television fan. I mean, I watch Survivor with my mom but that’s about it. So when we were auditioning I thought I’d better see what the show was like. That was a really interesting experience, watching the show and wondering if that would be me one day — would I be wearing pants or pumps?

So did you have “no creamed corn” as a stipulation in your contract?

That’s a great question. I’m not allowed to discuss what was and wasn’t in my contract, unfortunately creamed corn falls under non-disclosure.

How did your wife, Donna, react when you told her you were auditioning? Did she think you were a little crazy?

She always thinks I’m a little crazy. She basically said, “You’re a musician, and this show could be a way to get people to hear about your music — they may hate it, they may hate you, they may like it — at least you’re getting it out there”.

As far as being on the show, we talked about it in the context of what we would have done if this happened ten years ago — then there would have been no hesitation, we’d have been in our early twenties and we were even more crazy back then, going to lesbian parties and running around New York and just generally getting into trouble. But now we’re in a different stage in our lives, which is where that hesitation originally came from.

You already have a really great band, Clinical Trials, and so I’m curious about what drove you to join another one?

It started with a conversation — a telephone conversation — between Kiyomi and I. She said that she respected me as a musician and wanted me to infuse a bit of my sound into what they were doing. I knew that they were a lot further along than my own band was — they had more fans, they had this poppy sound that appealed to a lot of people. So we discussed and agreed how it would be mutually beneficial for both parties. I wasn’t really looking for something new, the opportunity just came up. Then all the reality craziness happened.

So far this show is portrays Kiyomi as someone who has a very strong personality, who is a little bit cocky. Is this the Kiyomi that you know?

It is and it isn’t. She does have a very strong personality and we’ve clashed a few times. As my wife has pointed out, we’re both brats. So yes, there’s a part of her that can be abrasive. She’s very focused on her music goals and whatever gets in the way of achieving success can get pushed aside.

But there’s this other side to her. She’s charismatic and she’s fun and she can be incredibly generous and caring and loyal, and these subtleties aren’t really coming across on the show because there’s so much conflict! Also, telling a story about the beauty of friendship probably isn’t all that interesting. Are viewers going to tune in for hugs, or are they going to tune in because two people are screaming at each other on stage?

When you witness all of the girl drama that Kiyomi has with her non-girlfriend, Ali, does it make you feel a sense of relief that you’ve got Donna back home?

Absolutely! I think most people want to find their soul mate and I’ve been very lucky to have found mine. Those two fight a lot and it can be tough to watch. People just want to find their partner and they’re trying to figure out whether they’re going to work as a couple.

How did you and Donna meet?

I was handing out flyers for a show, it was this drag king show with a musical act in middle. I saw this cute girl sitting on a curb and I thought, “I’m gonna give this girl a flyer!” and I did. She was so cute and so drunk — she was in grad school, she had just finished writing a paper and was out celebrating.

I was so upset because she disappeared before I could get her number. Then she showed up ten minutes later eating a falafel and I knew then that she was the one for me — the drunk girl eating a felafel in the middle of a bar. She was so sweet. We ended up hanging out another night when we were both more sober and we clicked, we both realized that we had good hearts and that was it.

SO what was the proposal like? Was it as orchestrated as Whitney’s?

No. I wanted to wait until our anniversary to propose, but then I started having these terrible nightmares about Donna not liking the ring and not liking the proposal and so I kept waking up in the middle of the night all sweaty and upset. Naturally she wanted to know what was going on. When I finally admitted that the nightmares were about getting her a piece of jewelery  that she didn’t like, she put two and two together and ruined the surprise!

So I wanted to get down on my knee and tell her that I loved her and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but I didn’t get the chance to do the romantic, suave proposal thing. No chance to do any of that Romeo crap.

The Real L Word Episode 303 Recap: Love Lost Its Way And Ended Up On This Show

Hello and welcome to the star-studded Autostraddle recap of the third episode of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour musical television program about a teenage rock group who fill their days performing enthusiastic cover songs at The P*lace and discussing serious issues such as schoolyard crushes and peer pressure.

This week on The Real L Word, everybody cried, Whitney dove from an airplane into a serene pool of heavily chlorinated water, Romi wore eighteen earrings in one ear and an entire mountain range on a necklace and Lauren and Amanda explored the seedy sexual underbelly of Los Angeles’ Booth Babes subculture. Also, Ilene Chaiken broke into a stock footage factory and was so impressed with clips of Los Angeles at Night and Austin Streets at Dawn that she infused the episode with 65% more stock footage than usual. Also, an alligator ate Somer’s arm and Kiyomi refused to pay for it. Let’s begin!

We open in Sunny Los Angeles, where the brilliant morning sunshine casts its generous rays across the newlyengayged couple, Sarahara and Whitney.

Clearly we’re all chomping at the bit for more footage of Sarahara and Whit-me’s naked weheartishly-lit mornings, so this scene was not even at all slightly boring.

Sarahara interviews that she really enjoyed the Energy Healer Lifeshram Goobaroo Incense Hemp Moon Voodoo Party last week.  All her chakras are aligned:

Sara: “It was really beautiful. Out of all the different engagement stories that I’ve heard of, this by far was the most creative and brilliant that I’ve heard.”

Oh really?

Was it really, Sara? Was it better than this?

How about this? Was it better than this?

How about this?

No but really, was it better than this? It wasn’t!

+

Ultimately, if it wasn’t this (below), then you’re doing it wrong:

We stumble forward in a Southernly direction to Kiyomi’s vagina JUST KIDDING to a hotel room in San Antonio, where Somer’s repairing her ailing keyboard and Kiyomi is doing the conversational equivalent of masturbating in front of the bathroom mirror.

Kiyomi and Vero flip enthusiastically through a notebook containing a cornucopia of temporary tattoos while Somer seeks positive affirmations regarding saving the band “like 400 dollars in repairs.”

Kiyomi: (to Vero) “She was gonna have to pay for it anyway. It’s not the band’s repairs.”
Somer: (In the other room) “I get like zero percent love for fixing this.”

Kiyomi’s busy covering her hickeys with temp tattoos while my Canadian girlfriend is busy discussing how Americans don’t abbreviate “Veronica” as “Vero” and how it’s really pronounced Vair-oo and how Vero is definitely Francophone. [UPDATE: she isn’t, see here]

Back in the Industrial Backlots of Sunny Los Angeles, California, Romi and Rose are hitting up Jeffery’s Warehouse Salon for Rose’s hair to lose its virginity.

Quick time out: So, Rose is getting her hair done on a folding chair in a warehouse. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are:

At a suspiciously convenient moment, Ruby rings Rose to gossip about Whitney and Sara’s engagement, which Rose consequently conveys to Romi, and you can see for at least ten seconds that Romi does care, actually, a little bit, but very much wishes she didn’t. Not because Romi wanted to marry Whitney, but because she wants to marry somebody and soon, I think, and nobody wants their non-committal confirmed Bachelorette ex-girlfriend to marry before they do.

Romi: “Wait wait, engaged? Is that what it was?”
Rose: “What can you say?”
Romi: “It’s beautiful.”
Rose: “I just wish them the best.”
Romi: “I wish them so much happiness.”
Rose: “That’s all you can do.”

Romi interviews that there’s no way Sarahara and Whitney’s mutual fear of eternal-commitment can conquer the burning fire of their sweet sweet love.

Romi: “Do I think that they’ll make it? I don’t know. But I don’t think that anybody needs to go through dating Whitney again or anybody wants to go through dating Sara again, so I pray that they stay together forever ’til death do they part.”

And onward we go to The House of Sad and Fog, where two of the saddest Pandas in all of Los Angeles are attempting to breathe, speak, think, hope, eat, sleep, and/or live despite, I imagine, wanting to crawl into a cave and sob indefinitely. Cori is transporting a rack of unbearably adorable onesies from the closet to her drawer, and so is Kacy, and so we know that what we knew was going to happen has happened.

It’s difficult for me to reconcile a story as heavy as this being wedged between Rose not wanting her highlights to look like some Chola and Kiyomi telling Somer she’s a self-entitled prick.

The couple interviews:

Kacy: “Cori had some bleeding, and so we went to the emergency room and they did an ultrasound but they didn’t check Cori’s cervix, and they sent us home. They said everything was fine and they sent us home. And the next day we went ot our OBGYN who said everything was not fine, Cori’s cervix was opening prematurely, it’s just a condition that’s very rare.”
Cori: “I was five months pregnant.”

Kacy: “We made it through delivery. She came out at 9:12 PM. The first question we asked was, can we put her in an incubator? And she needed two more months.”
Cori: “We were so close.” [sobbing]
Kacy: “She was too little.”

Cori: “She was moving all day, we felt her, she was fine.”
Kacy: “There’s nothing that you could’ve done baby, it was perfect, she was perfect, there’s nothing you could have done.”

What’s beautiful about this, if there’s any beauty to be found in a well this dark and sad, is how dedicated and loving their relationship is, and how you can see Kacy fighting back the urge to completely decompose because she knows Cori has decomposed already, and will continue to, and that she has to keep it together for her. And that Cori knows this, too, and can depend on it.

Cori: “I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this, I’ve never experienced heartbreak and pain like this. I don’t know what I would do without Kacy. I don’t know, I’m just, trying to take things day by day and I don’t know.”

I cried through this scene, big real actual tears.

…and now we return to our regularly scheduled emotional impact, in which nothing is everything and everything is drama, where Kiyomi and Somer are facing off in a Dinosaur vs. Cylon Death Match.

Kiyomi wants to check the adaptor, or something, and Somer wants to go upstairs and chill and Vero is cool as a motherfucking cucumber and Laura is just being Miley. Also cool as a refrigerated vegetable, Somer leans with exasperation against the elevator as her and Kiyomi throw invisible rocks at each other and Kiyomi makes enormous hand gestures suggestive of a fight that actually matters.

Kiyomi: “I don’t know why you have to be so difficult.”
Somer:  “I don’t know why you have to be such a bitch all the time.”

Kiyomi: “I’m not a bitch! Because you can’t hear your fucking tone and I respond to you with the same tone and you realize — when you’re constantly —
Somer: “I don’t ever give you this kind of attitude -”
Kiyomi: “When you’re constantly rude to people -”
Somer: “You always talk like this to everyone, you talk like we’re –”
Kiyomi: “No I don’t.”
Somer: “Yes you do.”
Kiyomi: “No I don’t!”
Somer: “Why do you think people call you the dictator?”

Um, probably because of that outfit she’s always wearing?

Kyomi and Somer scream gayly forward, breaking all the rules of Lesbian Fight Club, most notably Rule #3.

Kiyomi: “I don’t care.”
Somer: “–because you’re really mean!”
Kiyomi: “No, you know what–”
Somer: “You can be really snippy.”
Kiyomi: “No, you’re a fucking self-entitled little asshole sometimes!”
Somer: “You’re talking about yourself, dude.”
Kiyomi: “No I’m not, you need to check yourself!”
Somer: “I don’t know what you’re talking about dude, I’m laid back and chill.”
Kiyomi: “Okay then talk to the rest of the bandmates and see what they say, you can not go through a day without complaining about a single fucking thing –“

Somer: “You can’t go through a day without talking to people in a really nasty tone, and I know –”
Kiyomi: “I talk to you exactly the same way–”
Somer: “– and I know it’s your personality, but it’s grating.”
Kiyomi: “I talk to you exaclty the same way you talk to me!”
Somer: “It’s grating, after a while.”
Kiyomi: “Yeah so is your fucking self-entitled little pissy piece of shit attitude!”
Somer: “Alright.”

I’d easily qualify a good 60% of Kiyomi’s vocal utterances as spoken in “a really nasty tone,” and all I’ve heard Somer complain about was when her most valued possession got fucked in a hasty hungover packing situation, but regardless Kiyomi leaves Somer in her dust and fumes forward into the parking lot, speeding like a tampon escaping a crowded vagina, consumed with rage and ego.

Kiyomi: “I’m done!”

Kiyomi commences yapping to a semi-interested Laura and a completely disinterested Vero regarding why Somer is the self-entitled one, not her, and the reason is that Kiyomi has put “eight years of blood, sweat, and tears” into her band Hunter Valentine.

Cut to Los Angeles circa March or August 1886, where Miss Amanda and Miss Lauren are transforming your average everyday bedframe/mattress situation into a “pod.” Gripping stuff.

Amanda: “We’re building this thing and we’re calling it a pod because it looks like a giant bed that goes outside. The pod is for laying outside, and you can throw the curtains down and maybe hook up with somebody in some warm weather.”

This sounds like something that my old buddies at Phi Sigma Kappa might come up with, but whatever. Lauren asks if Britenelle plans to grope Amanda at Plato’s Retreat Pod but Amanda says Britenelle don’t come around here no more.

Amanda: “Lauren really scared Britt off, it was very prevelant that they didn’t get along, like even the energy when they were in the same room together was like… WOOF.”

Lauren affirms Amanda’s decision like some girls do when the girl they like drops the girl they hate and you have some roundabout psychological explanation for the breakup’s necessity to mask your actual motivation which’s wanting to bang-bang-bang on the door to her baby’s vaginal walls now & forevermore. I retired from that kind of emotional business circa 2006 — both sides —  but these are great reminders of the follies of my youth.

Amanda: “It’s really annoying that Lauren scared her off like that but there’s no point in upsettting lauren, so i’m just not gonna say anything.”

Real L Word 302 Recap: A Leap Of Faith Into a Puddle Of Nonsense

Hello and welcome to the second recap of the third season of The Real L Word, a half-hour teen sitcom starring a teenage girl who sports eye-scorching brightly-colored multi-layered outfits and speaks directly to the camera regarding a plethora of Serious Topics such as her first training bra, her annoying little brother, school, boys, and pimples.

Well, now that we’ve sold our first-born child to Contempo Casuals and strapped on our leggings and high-tops, it’s time to get down to business!

First things first: Autostraddle’s Season Two parody video, edited by the incredibly physically attractive Real L Word extra Sarah Croce and starring famous actors like Autostraddle Design Director Alex Vega and pregnant Season One cast member Jill Goldstein-Weiss, is finally here, and if you’ve yet to bear witness to its excellency, you should either kill yourself or go watch it right now.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that taken care of — one last tangent before I attempt(/fail) to turn 52 comatose minutes of “television” into something mildly entertaining — the time/space continuum on this show is totally fucked!  I mean, duh, but also, as I realized last week and consequently shared with you in the comments of last week’s recap, last week’s episode contained footage from five different months, and consequently so does this week’s episode and probably so will all the rest of the episodes.

Last week, Hunter Valentine was prepping for South by Southwest, which happened in March 2012, so the Hunter Valentine scenes are all from March 2012.

Romi & Jay were attending a Halloween Party for the LGBT Center, which happened in October 2011, and the photos Kelsey’s looking at on Romi’s facebook are from December 2011, but also, Romi and Kelsey were back together by January 2012 at the latest (they have since broken up and Romi has a new boyfriend named Dusty at present), so the Romi/Jay scenes are all from October/November 2011 and the Kelsey scene is from January 2012.

Cori got pregnant in August 2011, and they said she was four months in last week, so the Cori/Kacy scenes were from December 2011.

The launch party for Lyon Jewelry happened in February 2012, so Lauren’s scenes were shot in February 2012 — but, although Lauren spends that scene interviewing about eagerly anticipating Amanda’s arrival, Amanda was there already, she was at the launch party, so both the Lauren scenes and the Amanda scenes must be from very late January or February 2012.

In conclusion, THIS SHOW IS A LIE. Sorry!

We open in a sunny sidewalk cafè, where Whitney has summoned her sister Alexis to discuss her upcoming Proposal to Sarahara.

Whitney’s been having some weird subliminal Moby Dick shit going on:

Whitney: “I’ve had two dreams/nightmares about it in the past two days. Last night, I had a dream that a big giant whale came and it smushed me and I pushed it away to try to save it and to prevent myself from being scrunched, and as I pushed it, it got slit open and it deflated. What does that mean?”

Pretty sure it means y’all should film an episode at Sea World, like when The Brady Bunch went to King’s Island.

Whitney: “So basically, Sara thinks pretty much that I’m 100% anti-marriage. So I feel like in order to really get that zing in, I have to make that proposal completely over the top. So of course I came up with the hardest most complicated plan that is probably unnecessary.”

Girlfriend, getting the zing in is no small task. I salute you.

The ever-s0-clever Whitney’s smushed together a plan wherein her true intentions (proposal) will be disguised by a “Spiritual Healing Party” she’s throwing. Apparently Sarahara “is really into new age things,” which’s a side effect of living in Los Angeles and being a girl who likes having sex with other girls. If you stay there long enough, your heart will turn into a geode.

Whitney spends most of the episode in awe of her own proposal-planning skills. She could’ve just had her server at The Olive Garden bring out the ring on top of a hunk of birthday cake, filmed a lip-dub with 80 of their closest friends or put the ring in a hot air balloon and then had the hot air balloon land on Sarahara’s head, but that wouldn’t be the cowboy way.

Smear on over to New York Diddy, where Kiyomi and her not-girlfriend Ali, in preparation for Hunter Valentine‘s Incredible Amazing Vadgetastic Spectacular Lifetime Monster World Tour, are poking each other in the face. Metaphorically. They’re poking each other in the face with words.

It seems that while Kiyomi was hidden away in the bathroom practicing sexy facial expressions in the mirror, Ali hit up the BBB and returned with three additional closets. Or else they’ve been there all this time and there’s just nothing else to talk about so we’re gonna talk about it right now:

Kiyomi: “I don’t think you need one – two -three – four closets. Just a thought.”
Ali: “Well, that’s just towels and blankets and stuff.”
Kiyomi: “You’re just one person in here. How many towels and blankets do you need?”
Ali: “I have a lot of guests.”
Kiyomi: “Trying to make me jealous? That’s a good idea before I go on tour.”
Ali: “That’s not funny.”
Kiyomi: “Neither was your joke.”

Well, I’m glad we can all agree on something.

Kiyomi interviews that due to the “200 days of the year” she’s away from home playing in her rock ‘n roll band, she can’t commit to Ali.

But Ali’s conflicted between the part of her that cares about Kiyomi and the part of her that is pretending to care about Kiyomi’s career.

Ali: “I want her to be you know, playing as many different shows as possible and getting all different fans from all different states, but I worry. I can’t imagine what’s going on. Sometimes I don’t want to imagine what’s going on.”

I do! Okay, my first guess is that it’s probably like this:

But then I thought nooooo, it’s gotta be way more like this:

Hold the phone, it’s this:

But by “this” I mean actually THIS:

JK, it’s this.

We zoom over to another street, where hey, hey, the band’s all here! Laura interviews their itinerary, which’ll first take them to Phase One in D.C., then to The Milestone in Charlotte, “where even Nirvana played.” (RIP)

While Laura packs the van, Somer and Donna say goodbyes and Somer interviews about the perilous future. See, apparently, Somer is a Unicorn who greets the daily dawn by prepping piping hot coffee for her lady-love, dressing her, getting her out the door, and occasionally even packing lunch! Now that she’s off On Tour, Donna will be forced to subsist on Lunchables and Capri Suns or overpriced salads at Pax!

But seriously, they’re gonna be gone for what? A week? 10 days? And this throws “a huge curveball” into their marriage? We’re only at Episode Two and already this is what we’re being served up as “conflict.” Where’s Claire?

Cut to Rainy Los Angeles, where Lauren the Glamazonian Princess Warrior is driving to the airport to retrieve Amanda, her best friend with benefits/eyeliner.

Lauren’s not obligated to maintain the fourth wall because of how pretty she is. She just drives & talks to the camera, like a walk & talk for ladies.

Lauren: “The last time she visited, we did hook up… but it’s like, it’s not a big deal to us. We’re not starting a relationship, we’re not you know, anything, it’s just casual hooking up, you know, I’m positive nobody’s gonna have any feelings involved. That’s what I’m excited about, having someone around all the time where you can kinda do everything together and not have it be a relationship, it’s just having like your best friend.”

So, basically a relationship, but the kind where if one partner hurts or in some way betrays the other, any constructive communication about said upsetting incident is met with, “it’s not like we’re in a relationship or anything!”, therefore ensuring maximum passive-aggressive behavior between both partners and lots of drunk screaming. Bring it on!

Amanda says she’s got 800 bags. Bitch was lying, she’s got her entire life stored on a computer chip over her left ear:

The ladies are ecstatic about their mutual geography:

Lauren: “Lamanda.”
Amanda: “Lamanda’s here. Oh my gosh I’m so excited.”

Amanda interviews that she left a lady behind in New York City, which was like, one of those things where you’re like, “should I be doing this or should I not be doing this?” but then like, for her, it was that she’s not gonna stay in a city because of a person. You know? Totally.

Amanda’s got eight billion outfits in her eight billion bags and will have to use Lauren’s closet. A lot of closet-talk this episode. I’m adding “somebody says ‘closet'” to the drinking game. Tour!

Elsewhere in Los Angeles during some other day, week, year or plague, Whitney’s making shit up about some spiritual healer she knocked boots with at the 2012 Positive Affirmational New Age Convention who can fly, see through walls, and host spiritual healing parties, or something.

Whitney tells Sarahara that the Spiritual Healer does creative visualization and can also cleanse bad energies, like the bad energies whirling about within their gaggle of gal-pals, and therefore Whitney’s planning an event in which they can get this shit taken care of.

Whitney: “Basically, the Academy Award goes to this guy, right here. Sara has zero clue that I’m proposing, and especially not at this random spiritual event.”

Several years earlier in the Los Angeles Metro area, Romi Flinger’s meeting up with Rose Garcia, a Season One cast member who doesn’t like me. No really, she doesn’t. Here’s the thing about Rose: 1. She’s smokin’ hot, 2. She reminds me of dudes I dated in college who I never want to see again. Anyhow, speaking of dudes, Romi Flinger’s got one to talk about:

Romi Flinger is telling Rose and anyone else in a 50-foot radius (damn these girls talk loud!) that she’d always considered herself a lesbian until she met Jay, and now she’s dealing with all these new feelings! Except that she first dated Jay in 2009, but maybe everyone got glamoured and I missed it.

Romi interviews:

Romi: “I would never have said that I was a bisexual honestly. I always considered myself a lesbian but now it’s a weird thing to say because I’m not used to saying it at all and I’m not comfortable with it but I guess I have to say… that I would be… bisexual.”

Rose is down:

Rose: “Dude, I don’t care, all I care about is the fact that you’re happy. Whether it’s a penis injecting in you or whether your mouth is on a vagina, whatever’s going on, I mean obviously for me I couldn’t be physical with a guy but I could imagine falling in love with a guy. Love is love, you don’t care —”

I feel pretty much the opposite of that, but anyhow: I wonder if there’s a correlation between how many male friends a lesbian has and how she reacts to a bisexual woman dating a guy. Like maybe lesbros are more likely to “get it” because hanging out with dudes is the way that they live anyhow. You know?

Rose: “You know what I mean, and when it comes to the physical aspects of it –”
Romi: “You are a man.”
Rose: “Me and Jay are on the same team, you’re not on our team. He’s all about the three things that I’m about; WPP. Work Party and Pussy.”

They actually go on to discuss blow jobs and balls, but let’s just pretend like that never happened.

Somewhere between here and forevermore, Laura’s eating broccoli which’s stinking up the Hunter Valentine van which’s en route to their Big Gig at Phase One.

Laura: “Touring with anybody is intense. And you get to know each other very quickly. It’s an intense situation and personal space is something that you lose.”

Vero: “Kiyomi you’re moving around so much, like a little kid! Why don’t you sit in the back?”
Kiyomi: “Shut the fuck up.”
Vero: “You shut the fuck up! Don’t tell me to fucking shut up!”
Somer [to Kiyomi]: “I want you to shut the fuck up too.”

After “driving all day,” the ladies arrive in DC where they play some rock n’roll music for a sea of alternative lifestyle haircuts and subsquently commence drinking copious amounts of alcohol from shot glasses and the bottle. Activities include Laura’s vagina in somebody’s face, Vero dancing like a boss and Kiyomi sucking a girl’s brain out of her body via mouth-hole.

So, here’s the deal: they’ve got hos in different area codes.

Kiyomi: “Laura and have developed a system that we call ‘regional reps,’ and that basically means that you know, when you go to said city, you have a girl that you see in that city every time and that becomes your regional rep for that area. I think we’re doing pretty well with the system, and the band is gonna continue to work hard to find reps in all areas of the country.”

Here’s Washington D.C.’s Regional Rep:

Kiyomi, mistress of tact, stops her cuddle session short with an “I gotta call my girlfriend,” skulking outside for another adult conversation with her not-girlfriend. Luckily for all of us, a camera crew happens to be at Ali’s pad circa this phone call.

Kiyomi: “What’s been going on with you?”
Ali: “Nothing really.”
Kiyomi: “How are you feeling about me being away?”
Ali: “I just miss you and I wanna see you.”
Kiyomi: “I miss you too. Have you been good?”
Ali: “I’m always good.”

Speaking of balls, Kiyomi interviews that she can’t trust Ali ’cause last time she went On Tour, Ali was “kinda angry” and slept with one of Kiyomi’s friends.

Kiyomi: “And I’m glad, that’s good. I’m trying to trust you.”
Ali: “How do I trust you?”
Kiyomi: [silence] “Hmmm. Well…”
Ali: “I just don’t, right?”
Kiyomi: “Okay, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I hope we’re all proud of ourselves for this.

Real L Word 301 Recap: Apples and Oranges and Bananaheads

Welcome to the first recap of the first episode of the third season of The Real L Word, an hour-long drama about a pioneer woman with gigantic sleeves and weird hats who journeys to Colorado Springs to become a doctor at a time when women were not doctors (because of the patriarchy).

WeHo town, it’s a quiet village, every lay like the one before, WeHo town, full of stylish people, waking up to say … Bonjour! Good day!  How is your gay family? Bonjour! Good day! How is your wife? I need! More sperm! That’s too expensive! I want much more than this Sho-vincial life…  just watch I’m going to make Sara my wife!

There goes the hipster with her hair like always, the same old fashion shows to sell. Every morning just the same, since the morning that we came to this poor reality show –

GOOD MORNING, HELL!

Sheesh. I’m exhausted. Wow. So, The Real L Word! On a scale of one to ten, I found this episode slightly more interesting than the Home Shopping Network.

Just one diversion before we lick our lips and dive in to this moist cave of despair — embarking upon the third season of The Real L Word makes me think back to the third season of Ilene Chaiken‘s other moderately-successful hit Showtime series, The L Word. You remember, don’t you? That glorious march of doom? The season in which the ladykiller finally made a commitment and moved in with her sexy girlfriend and then proposed to her? The season in which we fell to collective pieces in the wake of a tragic and untimely death? The season in which a woman who’d been in a lesbian relationship for the past 8.5 years got in touch with her lingering desire for men? Yes, that season. I hated that season.

Anyhow, let’s get this shitshow on the road!

We open in sunny Los Angeles, California, where glamorous supergoddess Romi Flinger is cruising past Tuna-Town while talking about herself: she’s been sober for a year, lost a lot of friends, is “madly in love” and is wearing 76 individual pieces of jewelry at the same time including sapphire studs on her interior vaginal walls.

Did I mention that Romi Flinger is in love? Well, she is:

Meanwhile, elsewhere on Los Angeles’ labyrinth highway system, Whit-me is driving her car, talking about herself. 

The Pride of West Hollywood has “fallen in love,” which is so “crazy” that she “can’t even wrap her head around it.” Plus, that stupid hat’s in the way.

Thus we zoom gayly forward accompanied by not only Whit-me and Romi Flinger’s Life Updates, but also by the vexatious vibration of the insufferable BETTY-esque vocals intoning “You got to show me how you move, move, move / if you wanna see my hotel room.” Ain’t that the truth.

Whit-me and Romi Flinger, seemingly spilling over with desire for their aforementioned lovers, return home — Whit-me, of course, returns to Sahara…

…and Romi, of course, returns to … men?

Yup.

Romi: “For the past six months, I’ve kind of been living this secret life. I don’t know, it’s time to just, stop.”

Indeed, Romi’s been inspired by the nearby camera crews to reveal her present activity partner, Jay, an admission which shocked my socks off only ’cause I thought Romi’s boyfriend this season would be this Dusty character from their special tumblr, and I’d been hoping and praying that Dusty would be a super-awesome smart feminist or something and this storyline would be really enlightening and complicated. HAHAHAHA!

Anyhow, guess what else is ready for its reveal?

Romi’s boobs! And um, Romi and Jay fucking!

Now, bisexual women are glorious humans near and dear to my heart and vagina and former self-identification and personal history and reading list, but MEN, on the other hand? I hate men. Reader, let me be honest with you: this show’s single redeeming factor was its consistent lack-of-men. It rarely subjected me to the thoughts or feelings of modern man, let alone their sexual desires, let alone actual heterosexual sex, which I maxed out on personally between the years of 1998 and 2005 and in any event I could watch heterosexual sex on every other show ever made about anything, ever. Can’t we get one corner of the sky?

[Fun Fact: only 61% of The Real L Word‘s audience is female.]

Meanwhile, The Pride of West Hollywood got so steamy on her way over that she requires an immediate shower and fingerfuck (to wipe off the stench of pussy juice and creamed corn and replace it with the stench of pussy juice and Bath & Body Works).

BANG!

Thus the season kicks off with a sex montage of Whit-me/Sahara and Romi Flinger/Jay. Yay! Sexathon forever! Sigh.

Let’s travel to New York City, my home and native land (not really, Michigan is my home/native land, but New York City, where I lived for six years, is the only girl I’ve ever really loved) (besides my girlfriend) (who just said “I feel like a Real L Word widow”), where Hunter Valentine has trekked all the way from the Yukon Yak-and-Harp-Seal-laden lands of Canadia to “make it” as ROCK GODS.

Let’s meet the band! First up is Kiyomi, Hunter Valentine’s lead singer:

Kiyomi founded this band with Laura eight years ago. Laura’s on drums:

Vero, no relation to Vemo, is on bass. She’s been in the band for about a year:

Last but not least, Hunter Valentine has just added a new keyboardist:

Wait, sorry, wrong picture. New keyboardist:

Yup, Somer is another lesbian with a cool haircut giving me perfect-jaw-envy (I’ve got a “weak chin” and thus am obsessed with humans who’ve got amazing jawlines, e.g., Tegan & Sara, Clea Duvall, SOMER BINGHAM). Howevs, as the above streetscape suggests, Somer’s not at practice which’s unfortunate ’cause they’ve got a “tour” to prepare for — HV’s got a gig coming up at South by Southwest, the Austin, Texas-based music festival I’ve got fond fond memories of.

Rather than employ cellular telephone technology to locate and/or reprimand Somer, Hunter Valentine rehearses sans-keyboard and by “rehearses sans-keyboard” I mean “bitches about having to rehearse sans-keyboard.”

Kiyomi: “This is pointless because we don’t need to practice these songs.”
Laura: “It’s actually Somer who needs to practice these songs.”
Kiyomi: “— or we need to practice these songs–”
Both: “With Somer.”

Kiyomi interviews that Somer’s been her friend for ages and is a great musician but has band “commitment problems.” Also:

Anyhow, where the hell is Somer? Perhaps Waldo knows…

Smear over to the cold mid-afternoon streets of Brooklyn or Queens, where Somer’s dog-walking with Donna, her girlfriend of four years to whom she wedded in holy matrimony just this past summer.

I bet when Donna signed up for “in sickness and in health” she wasn’t aware she’d be subjected to constant expository conversations, like the enchanting exchange about Somer’s work and practice schedule the passionate duo engage in while dog-walking.

Somer interviews to set up her story arc/”conflict” for this season:

Somer: “The tour is supposed to be a trial period for me to see if we click on stage, if I have a good time playing the music, if we get along, for the band to make sure that I’m the person that they want, that they can get along with me, also in terms of my relationship with Donna, to see if our marriage can take me being away for weeks and months at a time.”

There’s some kind of transition to Somer finally showing up for practice which I’ve since forgotten and then here she is, surrounded by women with large instruments who are seething with passive-aggressive resentment towards Somer and her cute haircut and perfect jaw and latey-late-lateness.

Apparently Somer’s acquired minimal knowledge of the set-list but nevertheless exudes a maximum capacity for fun-fun-fun as well a maximum capacity for pushing Kiyomi’s buttons. Kiyomi declares, “we need to practice this song like ten times.”

Vero is super-jazzed about that suggestion:

More importantly, you may notice that Kiyomi is gradually applying more layers from interview to interview throughout this scene, suggesting an issue with climate change:

Psychotic Barbie music transitions us back to the doctor’s for The Return of Cori & Kacy, who you may recognize as the only cast members you still liked by the end of Season Two:

Cori & Kacy are hanging out at their favorite snack shack, The Gynecologist’s Office! On the menu today: an ultrasound of Cori’s four-month-old fetus situation! Yup — Cori and Kacy finally got pregnant.

Lemme take a sidenote time out and issue a SPOILER ALERT for anybody who doesn’t already know what I’m about to say, but I’m pretty sure anybody who cares about this show already knows this — Cori and Kacy are going to lose this baby, and we know this because we wrote about it when it happened and you probably read it. I can’t even watch these scenes without thinking how hard it must be for Cori & Kacy to watch these scenes.

It’s just so tragic and so sad, because these two are so sweet and so rad, and so earnestly pumped about their potential offspring but all that joviality is impossible to enjoy, let alone mock (as recappers must), when one knows what’s coming. I can’t even bring myself to ask Intern Grace to photoshop a tiny hat onto this ultrasound.

Cori: “After a few rounds of unsuccessful inseminations, everything that we’ve been doing this past year has finally worked.”
Kacy [to Cori]: “Little Mamasita!”

[Cori gets teary-eyed]
Cori: “I mean –”
Kacy: [pointing at Cori’s teary face] “That’s the best part.”
Cori: “We’re gonna have a baby!”
Kacy: “You see this, do you see the happiness here? That’s the best part.”
Cori: “It’s the hormones.”

Kacy tells the story of Cori leaping into bed with the freshly-peed-upon positive pregnancy test stick and they both get teary and also happy but also exhausted and then the doctor tells them they’re having a girl, and they’re so happy and this is me:

Back to Sarahara’s Sugar Shack, where Whit-me and Sarahara stick food in one another’s mouthholes while interviewing about how they used to be mega-dysfunctional, which segues into a charming retrospective of some of their best moments:

But now that they’ve taken a leap of faith bla bla bla they can love each other forever in the same apartment, like baby birds:

Whitney: “I think we’ve come so far because we’ve allowed ourselves to fall in love.”

Luckily, says Sarahara, they realized the only thing keeping them apart besides Whit-me’s contractual obligation to be The Player was their “walls” and now they’ve taken their walls down, let the cameras way way way in, and thus embraced the mystical “connection” we’ve heard so much about.

Also:

Whitney: “Since Sara and I got really solid, Romi and I are not friends. Just because I think Sara felt betrayed.”

It’s okay, I get it — Romi inspired the Who’s At The Door Montage, and therefore Sara got left out of that whole private meme. It’s okay, Sarahara, I had Grace make you one:

Sarahara points out half-heartedly that “it’s hard to love somebody with your whole heart,” which isn’t true. Have you ever tried winning a round of Chopped with a whole (cow) heart in your basket? That’s hard.

Smear over to the “Lyon Fine Jewelry Launch,” which we’re segued into with “Chic Los Angeles nightlife music.” It’s time to meet Lauren Bedford Russel, this sort of glamazonian blonde/pink-haired lesbian with shiny teeth and confident sex-appeal.

So Lauren moved here from New York ten months ago and her jewelry is super-special and super-expensive and super shiny and AMAZING. In other words, Hija Por Vida, IT IS ON.

Her launch is attended by familiar faces including Whit-me and Whit-me’s Wholehearted Love, Sarahara. Whit-me knows everybody, because she’s dipped her salami in everybody’s asiago cheese ball, so obviously she knows Lauren, but she doesn’t “KNOW” Lauren, if you know what I mean, but guess who does KNOW Lauren (LIKE THAT)? Kelsey!

Yup. It seems Kelsey, Romi’s ex-girlfriend, rode another pink-haired beautiful tall jewelry designer’s pony recently.

Lauren: “I hardly know Romi at all and yet there’s some crazy rivalry, I don’t understand it, maybe she’s uncomfortable because Kelsey and I sort of liked each other for a minute?”

Fuck that shit, Lauren’s got her eyes on the future:

So Amanda’s being shipped to Los Angeles for the program, obviously, and whatever story they made up to explain it escapes me now but regardless the point is that Amanda and Lauren are “friends with benefits” and “of course we’re gonna end up hooking up.” So, you know. WATCH THIS SPACE.

Just to recap this recap thus far: this season’s allegedly about lesbian life in Los Angeles and New York City, but the NYC cast consists of a four-man band from Toronto who record in Toronto and are about to leave for Texas and a girl from New York City who’s moving to Los Angeles. If this is supposed to be New York City vs. Los Angeles, I think Los Angeles is winning? Womp WOMP.

But they don’t make them like this in Los Angeles:

Anyhow, let’s meet Amanda!

We don’t really “meet Amanda” this episode as I’m still not clear if she’s a stylist, promoter, makeup artist or jewelry designer or maybe even something totally different we’ve never seen on this show before. Maybe she’s Catwoman?

Amanda and her lesbian hipster friends have gathered at a watering hole to bid adieu to their friend who, if the ensuing three minute monologue is any indication, hasn’t told anybody anything about her life or future until this very moment.

Amanda’s gonna get all city girl on you:

Amanda: “Lauren and I have always talked about living together, like, growing our lives together, and it was just really important I think, for us, to do it while we’re young and we can afford it, and we can just explore and see what we want.”

Much like Whit-me and Sarahara circa Season Two (jesus shoot me I can’t believe I even know this), Amanda and Lauren have always had sexual tension but have never lived in the same city while single before.

Amanda: “There’s always been a sexual tension between Lauren and I since like, the minute we met, which is why it makes everybody that loves us and dates us so uncomfortable.”

Therefore, Amanda’s upcoming move to Los Angeles will be The Ultimate Challenge!

“It’s getting a little crowded, let’s go to the bar,” says Amanda. Ahhh the bar. Always a great place to stretch one’s limbs on a Friday night.

We zoom to another part of the city where Kiyomi’s returning to New York City from an Album Recording Adventure in The Wilds of Toronto to stay with her not-girlfriend, Ali.

Not-Girlfriend (noun) – Female with whom you sleep most nights and talk every day but do not consider yourself formally or monogamously involved with. Traditionally, not-girlfriends might always have dinner together, but are not one another’s go-to dates for weddings and office parties.

Ali’s been slaving all day over a hot oven to create a musical-note shaped cake for Kiyomi, which is so fucking ridiculously cute that Kiyomi will be punished in the afterlife for not immediately undressing Ali and eating frosting off her nipples.

Kiyomi and Ali interview regarding their variant perspectives on their relationship, which began maybe four or six or a billion months ago, I forget.

Kiyomi: “We’re not in a committed relationship, we’re supposed to just be casual, but we talk to each other every day and I just — I dunno where this is going.”

In other words, Ali thinks they’re basically girlfriends and Kiyomi is doing that thing where you say you’re not girlfriends but go completely batshit if your not-girlfriend talks to, kisses, or expresses physical attraction towards any other human being, ever.

Ali interviews that she and Kiyomi met through a mutual friend at a bar and then immediately hooked up in the bathroom, a story that she stole from me and my ex, Alex, and probably at least eighteen people reading this right now. Except for the next part where Ali woke up to find Kiyomi in her bed, like when Baby Bear came home and found Goldilocks in her bed.

Kiyomi: “Kissing you is so much different than all the other girls I’ve been kissing.”

Play on, player, play on.

The Semi-Official “Real L Word” Season Three Drinking Game

Well, it’s Thursday, July 12th, the day I’ve been dreading since the moment I heard that The Real L Word would premiere on Thursday, July 12th. If you’re just tuning in, here’s the gist: I hate this show (and reality TV in general) but unfortunately am apparently quite adept at recapping it and because said recaps garner ‘mad hits’ for this website, I persevere.

However, recapping The Real L Word requires massive doses of mind-altering substances. One of those substances is alcohol. I’m tempted to make a Real L Word Drinking Game that advises you to drink excessively if you plan on watching The Real L Word, but when I did that for Glee, I ended up drinking so much that I had to not drink again for another two weeks.

I also considered Brittani’s suggestion of “drink every time you see a black person,” but I don’t feel like that would get you drunk enough to watch this show.

So, here’s the game! Add your suggestions in the comments.

REAL L WORD SEASON THREE DRINKING GAME

ONE DRINK

+ Cast member declares that they are in love

+ More than two of Whitney’s ex-girlfriends are in the same room/scene

+ Anyone has sex in the shower or other body of water

+ Every incident of “Whitney Self-Inquiry” (e.g., “Will I hook up with Sara? Maybe.” “Do I have feelings for bananas? I do.” “Do I even fucking care anymore? No I don’t fucking care.”)

+ Camera equipment or camerapeople are visible onscreen

+  A cast member’s friends nod in apathy as the cast member dishes out exposition in their direction that’s supposed to masquerade as an actual conversation

+ The “east coast / west coast” “rivalry” is mentioned or a cast member discusses the differences between the two cities.

+ Any appearance by former Real L Word cast members

+ Any appearance by an Autostraddle-associated human

+ Cast members engage in extensive shit-talking about Romi

+ Kiyomi’s girlfriend or Whitney’s girlfriend registers a complaint regarding the amount of time/attention she has been given that evening

+ Anyone references or engages in sex with a dude

+ Anybody is wearing earrings you could fit your fist through

+ Kacy & Cori are in a scene that does not take place on their couch, at a restaurant or at the doctor’s office.

+ A member of Hunter Valentine says “tour”

+ There’s a shot of Romi’s bare breasts

+ Kacy & Cori’s cat makes an appearance

+ Blatant product placement (including bars & parties)

+ Hunter Valentine song appears in a scene that Hunter Valentine isn’t in

+ Somer is late for something

TWO DRINKS

+ The entire cast is in the same room / at the same event

+ Somebody cheats on their significant other

+ Somer is on time for something

+ 

THREE DRINKS

+ Somer quits or is kicked out of Hunter Valentine

+ Alyssa talks about herself in an interview

+ The show inspires you to cry real tears

+ LA FASHION WEEK

The Real L Word Season 3: Brooklyn Premiere Party Highlights

On July 8th, the cast of The Real L Word celebrated their third season premiere at a bar called, “The Knitting Factory.” I was pleased to see that it wasn’t at an actual factory and that nobody was knitting when I got there (because I don’t know how to.)

I was standing around outside waiting for the red carpet area to get set up, while Vero (one of the new girls, band member of Hunter Valentine) started talking to me. I am not ashamed to admit that her stunning good looks set my loins aflame, as though I were a straight lady discovering Fifty Shades of Grey for the first time, and that I kind of just stood there gawking at her while she talked.

At one point she said, “Hey, wait, what is your name? Etsie? Estie?”
I said, “Uh, Esther.”
She said, “Well, I’m gonna call you Estie. You have something in your hair.”
She plucked it out and I said, “Th-th-thank you!” and basically, there you have it: Estie is the new Sah-Dah.

After this, I went back inside (to take photos, not because I was following Vero or anything) and watched the whole cast be fabulous and gorgeous on the red carpet

When the photo shoot was done, I checked out the “NY vs. LA: Battle of the Bartenders” set up at the bar. I might be a little biased, but I think Sabrina Haley was the winner of the evening with her signature drink, “Dyke-o-tomy,” and not just because of her ability to throw/promote fantastic parties OR because she’s total eye candy, but because of her actual talent as a mixologist— Kombucha, cinnamon and alcohol never tasted so good.

With drink number one in hand, I got to talking with Somer and her wife, Donna at the bar. Somer and I recalled a hilarious phone interview we did a few months ago, where she confessed that she fled from Donna the first time she tried to hit on her because she got too nervous. Also, that when she saw her future wife eating a falafel sandwich that was falling all over the ground, she knew she was The One.

After this, I watched the opening electro-ish band called, Making Friends. They were super gender-fluid and awesome and rocking out with maracas. In fact, people vogued.

At this point, a preview of The Real L Word‘s opening credits for the new season came on, featuring Whitney and Kiyomi in a fierce stare off with California and LA backgrounds behind them. The camera definitely established and ensuing West Coast/East Coast rivalry reminiscent of 1996.

After that, Hunter Valentine came up and sang songs such as “The Stalker” and “Treadmills of Love.” Of course, I spent most of the time taking multiple shots of Vero and obsessing over her like a 16-year-old girl over Justin Bieber, then regretting a missed opportunity to throw my “Estie” monogrammed panties onstage.

And finally, the wait was over— I clutched a preview copy of Season 3’s first episode to my heaving bosom as I ran to the nearest cab. I can’t give away any spoilers quite yet, but let’s just say that it’s wacky, people. Wacky.

Real L Word Season Three Torture Prep: These Trailers, This Book

The clock tower on the hill is ominously counting down the days between now and Thursday, July 12th, when The Real L Word returns for its third season of mayhem, magic and masturbation. In this trailer, released last week, we go ‘behind the scenes’ with the cast, despite the fact that reality TV is, by definition, always “behind the scenes.” I mean… unless the scenes are staged or something? That’d be so weird! Here it is:

There’s also a new webisode of “Somer Fridays” available on the Showtime website. I was hoping it would be a show about how an average girl can develop an amazing jaw like Somer Bingam‘s, but instead it’s about the upcoming season of The Real L Word. I believe Somer will be releasing these videos every Friday. (Did I ever tell you about the time I went to apply to the TGI Friday’s in Times Square and they told me they only accepted applications on Friday’s? So I walked across the street to The Olive Garden and got a job there, and the rest is hospitaliano history.)

In anticipation of the impending darkness, I’ve decided to start reading Lillian Faderman (Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers) and Stuart Timmons‘ Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians, in hopes of tricking myself into viewing this program as somehow relevant, fitting into a broader cultural history of queer life in Los Angeles. It’s a long shot, but regardless I invite you to read along with me! (Also, if you’ve yet to read Reality Bites Back, now would be a good time).

As some of you are aware, I have been cursed in life with a gift for Real L Word recaps, which attract heaps of traffic to this website. Therefore, every summer I endure the program in exchange for ~30 people telling me that I’m funny once a week in the comments on a post it took 30 hours to write. So look forward to that! It beats The Olive Garden, I guess.

Real L Word Season 3: New Video and Imagery Are Very Shiny And Weird

Despite our communal passion for the groundbreaking yet insufferable “hit” Showtime series The Real L Word, we somehow managed to miss the memo last week when Showtime released its latest — and hands-down its weirdest — new promo, “Opposites Attract.”

Season Three, which takes place in both Los Angeles and Brooklyn, will begin ruining my life on Thursday July 12th at 10 PM. Here’s a sneak peak of what that might look like:

There are also some new promotional photographs which reflect the aesthetic qualities of a Seventeen magazine fashion shoot, or perhaps an advertisement for Guess Jeans, Teen Spirit deodorant or tampons.

There’s also this delightful poster starring Whitney and, I believe, Romi‘s ass:

There’s more fun to be had at the Showtime website, which features some “signature cocktail” recipes “inspired” by the television program, as well as some cast members’ most favored beverages. There’s also a relatively long list featuring some of Chow.com’s favorite cocktails because, I assume, they have some promotional situation with Chow.com this year. You are invited to submit your own favorite cocktail recipes and maybe win a chance to have sex with Whitney. Wait sorry I mean, “a free copy of Season Two of The Real L Word.” Just in case you didn’t have enough fun the first time around.

What do you think of the new promo?

Autostraddle Hot 100 2012: The Hottest Queerest Women In All The Land

Welcome to the 2012 Autostraddle Hot 100, the best hottest contest in the history of hot contests! In 2009, we ranked things that were hot. In 2010 and 2011, we let you submit photos of yourself and/or another queer lady near/dear to your heart. This year, we went a more traditional route, similar to what lad rags like Maxim started and what AfterEllen.com re-interpreted. But whereas they invite their readers to vote for any hot lady they please, we didn’t want to bother with all those straight girls and invited you to vote for actual queer ladies.

Also, Ellen Page ranked #7 but we didn’t put her on this list because we didn’t want to get yelled at about how she’s not out and/or not definitely gay. Sorry!

So, this list reflects who YOU voted for, not who we would’ve picked ourselves to produce a valuable snapshot of the queer community.

So here’s who you voted for, ya weirdos!

2012 Autostraddle Hot 100

(as voted on by the 1,000 weirdos who submitted ballots)

+

100. AzMarie Livingston

Model & TV Personality

99. Tabatha Coffey

TV Personality

98. Kate Cooper

Musician, An Horse

[autostraddle interview]

97. Kaki King

Guitarist & Composer

[autostraddle interview]

96. Abisha Uhl

Musician, Sick of Sarah

[autostraddle interview]

95. Kristin Russo

Co-Creator, Everyoneisgay.com

94. Lily Ye

93. Rose Garcia

TV Personality, The Real L Word

92. Otep Shamaya

Singer-Songwriter

91. Allison Weiss

Singer-Songwriter

[autostraddle interview]

The Real L Word Season 3: Brace Yourself For Terror, Nudity, Eyeliner, Recaps

You were probably planning on living out the rest of your day not thinking about how terrible it would be to have someone film your life, then edit it to tiny unrecognizable bits, then sew those bits back together and package them as reality and then sell that stitched up reality to Showtime for what must be an ungodly amount of money, otherwise why would it keep happening??? Weren’t you?

Well strap on (GET IT) your disappointment hats because today’s the day you get to watch the very first teaser for Showtime’s Most Poorly Edited and Brain Numbingly Boring Epicenter of Lesbian *Reality, The Real L Word!

Don’t even ask me how you’re ever supposed to listen to “Rebel Girl” again without thinking of this moment, because I have no idea.

Whitney, Romi, Sara, Kacy and Cori will be returning for a third round of what-the-fuck-ever and this season will also see the show expand to both coasts, with an LA cast and a New York City cast. From Entertainment Weekly, these are the bios of the new cast members (which includes members of the band Hunter Valentine, who are smokin’ hot):

Lauren (CEO of jewelry company) – LA
Claiming L.A. as the hub of the lesbian scene in America, Lauren and her friends are having a great time in the middle of it all. A committed bachelor, Lauren is anxiously awaiting the move from NYC of her best friend with benefits, Amanda. But when Amanda arrives in Lauren’s home, it’s hard to keep her emotions at bay as this non-couple navigate their relationship.

Kiyomi (rock band front woman) – NYC
Kiyomi is the ultra-cool, heartbreaking rock star at the center of Hunter Valentine. A natural leader, Kiyomi is extremely stubborn and fiercely committed to the band that she believes is on the brink of making it big. Along with band mates Laura, Vero, and Somer, Kiyomi is trying to balance a relationship at home with the demands of a rock star lifestyle.

Somer (rock band rhythm guitarist) – NYC
Somer is having trouble trying to live a “normal” life, including domestication, babies and, property with her new wife, yet still stay on the adrenaline-and-whiskey-infused rock star train that is her all-lesbian punk band. Since angsty Somer was voted by friends as “most likely to break a bottle at a bar,” it’s easy to see her conundrum. The newest member of Hunter Valentine is still struggling to figure out where she fits in this band of alpha females, but insists on having fun while she’s doing it.

Amanda (PR/real estate/socialite) – NYC/LA
Amanda’s making the move to the West Coast to reunite with her BFF and partner in crime, Lauren. At home in high society, Amanda won’t hesitate to call out anyone who doesn’t make the grade. A true New Yorker at heart and known as a high-energy jetsetter, Amanda finds it difficult to jibe with the relaxed SoCal attitude.

Also, I just want to say one thing. We held an Ask-Us-Anything panel at our A-Camp event last weekend and it was a blasty blast; I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more if Rachel had been naked and covered in strawberry pancake syrup. An audience member, Kate (hi Kate!), asked Riese if she’d be recapping the third season of The Real L Word, and of course Riese said yes because, of course, Riese likes traffic. But then! We polled the audience to see how many of them only read the recaps and NEVER watch the show and do you know what we learned?? Hardly a single damn one of you watch the actual show! You’re only in it for the recaps.

I just think that’s important to remember, when you’re thinking about how your day was going to be just fine and then this post happened.

Sorry.