What ineffable mists of strangeness were those that wafted o'er 
Sep 23, 2008 11:30 AM
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What ineffable mists of strangeness were those that wafted o'er The Hills last night? Ah yes, they were summoned by the fact that Lauren, the star of this muddled reality show about Angeleno fashion zombies, was away in Italy, leaving the lesser characters to rush in and fill her void. And fill it they did (metaphorically speaking, ain't nobody up in LC's void foreal). Audrina and Lo palled around, Audrina and Heidi palled around, and Spencerina went on a verboten date with Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir.
Yes, Lauren zipped off to Italy for reasons unknown, leaving Audrina and Lo—not the best of friends!—to their own devices. Evidently they decided to: drink strawberry mojitos and tan, eat lumpch at Fred Segal, and go to Goa. So they decided to lie down, drink, and eat. That is exactly what I do with my enemies. And my friends. And myself. Perfect. Though at Goa they "ran into" Spencer and Heidi, Lauren's tiresome enemies, so Audrina chatted up Heidi and talked about way too serious stuff to be shouted at a bar and Lo looked disgruntled and the music "nnyyuhh nyyuhh nyuhhh"d like it does and we went to commercial.
Oh! Oh! Before that, Audrina was all blissed out in her kitchen, chopping aimlessly at some sort of food product, when Spencerina, Spencer's angular sister, showed up for a visit. "Um... Lauren's not here" Audrina said awkwardly when Spencerina first rang. But the pointiest Pratt was there to speak deliberately with Audy. About Doug the Burrito King. Lauren's Doug the Burrito King. See they'd been hanginnnn' out and Doug asked Spencerina to dinner. So, zoms, should she go? Audrina sort of dodged giving an answer. Rather she just stared dimly off at some unknowable fixed point and issued an inaudibly high call towards the seas, hoping her dolphin friends would come rescue her. Sadly for Audrina, they did not. Because Audrina does not have the ability to talk to dolphins. But she won't believe it. No matter how many times Justin Bobby tells her. Nicely.
So Spencerina took Audrina's "episode" to heart and decided to go on with her bad self and agree to the producers' romantic invitation to go on a date with ol' Douglas Rice 'n Beans. So there they were, minding they business, when a great rumbling came up throughout the restaurant and the floor opened up and out skibbled some stretched and tanned creature of the night. "It's Brody's mom," Spencerina intoned. Busted! They chatted for a while and then when the mom and her friend left, Spencerina looked glum. Glum because she knew she'd been caught. Not caught by the mom but caught by the producers. It was a setup. It had all been a trick. None of it was real. Doug didn't like her. And Evan Conners probably doesn't really want to take her to prom. He's just going to throw eggs at her and laugh and laugh and laugh. Well she'll show 'em. She'll go to art school and become famous and no one will play tricks on her anym—
Hi! Sorry! I, like Audrina, sometimes have episodes. But it's over now. What's important is that Lauren came back from her trip and got all the skinny, after informing us that the whole of Italia was "like a construction site." In that the men whistle a lot. Anyway, she got the details on what went down and she was not happy. Not happy that Audrina spent time with Heidi and Spencer, and especially not happy that Spence's sister may have gone a'courting with Doug the Microwave Prince. So she went to dinner with Brody and he told her about what his mom saw and Lauren looked furious and sad and I wonder just what she was thinking.
I wonder, and I hope, that she thought of Italy. Of that first exhilarating bite of real gnocchi or parmigiana. Of the hum and glitter of lights and people in the Piazza Navona. Of the slow glide of the pontoon planes skimming Lake Garda. And I hope that on her trip she took time, as her bus rumbled over the shadowy hills of Umbria, to realize what a beautiful and heartbreaking world this is. Maybe, at that moment with Brody at dinner, she was deciding to send the producers a letter. And all that would be on it would be the Verdi quote "you may have the universe, if I may have Italy." And that would be that and these particular Hills would fade in the distance and a villa, and un ragazzo named Giovanni, would await her on the other side. And at least one of these people would be saved.
But, somehow I doubt it.
Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.
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