Not exactly all of them, but a whole bunch. It was like watching our nightmares come true on Live with Regis and Kelly. Daytime's dizzy duo do a bunch of really ornate and totally uninspired costumes for Halloween every year. Because it's 2009, they chose the Gosselins, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Lady Gaga (with a Susan Boyle). If that wasn't bad enough, their producer, Michael Gelman, made a guest appearance as Balloon Boy. Yes, all of those were on the list. For people who are going to put a ton of time, money, and effort into the execution of their costumes—and these are professional-grade turkeys—why not spend a little bit longer on the concepts and make that Mad Men John Deere lawnmower incident come to life?

The only acceptable exception to our list would have been if sometimes guest host Anderson Cooper showed up dressed as his favorite Real Housewife, NeNe Leakes. Now that is a frightening bit of unoriginality that we can endorse!

Life & Style
"I Lost 82 Lbs!"
Everyone loves a weight loss story… Except for us. Six pages of Biggest Loser info — including an "old diet" versus "new diet" chart and the obligatory grilled chicken over salad photo. Moving on: "More Heels For Suri" is self-explanatory (See image 7). "Wow! How Did They Do That?" is a baby weight feature in which pregnancy weights are compared to post-pregnancy weights. All weights were estimated from photos by a doctor who does not treat the stars. Obviously. Jessica Simpson and Gerard Butler had a "hot and flirty date"! The lead image looks like a shot of the happy couple, but it's actually two pictures cleverly pasted together. (See image 8; we added arrows pointing to the seam.) A source says Jess and Gerard had chemistry, but she ended up going home with her hairdresser. Someone else says: "He's horny, but there's nothing really going on between them." Next: Brad Pitt had a motorcycle mishap and told some guy that Angie was going to kill him, because she thinks motorcycles are too dangerous. (But didn't she buy him the bike?) Psychotherapist Jenn Berman, who does not treat Brad, says: "I don't think it's a good idea for a father to risk his safety." Lastly: Ashlee Simpson's character has been written out of Melrose Place and she is "devastated." And! Losing her salary is not good for the Simpson-Wentzes.
Grade: F (broken filling)

OK!
"Split!"
Robert Pattinson showed up 45 minutes late to the Eclipse wrap party, and when he left, he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. The mag writes: "The reason? He was hiding his broken heart." A "friend" of the couple's says he was talking marriage but Kristen Stewart wasn't ready. Apparently Kristen filmed some steamy love scenes with Taylor Lautner, and keeps talking about how he's getting "bigger and bigger and bigger." A source says "she couldn't stop noticing his bod. His hot bod." Anyways, Rob and Kristen are on a break, but it doesn't mean things are over. The break, interestingly enough, coincides with the hiatus between Twilight movies. (Robert doesn't want to go to LA with Kristen because he's scared of earthquakes.) Next: Bradley Cooper told Renée Zellweger he wants to slow down before anyone's feelings get hurt. The mag calls out Star for printing that Mary-Kate got engaged and also refutes Life & Style's claim that Angelina Joie has a fear of hugging. Check out the "exhaustive research" by their "Investigative Team" (See image 9). Jennifer Aniston is "one step closer to being a mom" because she visited an orphanage in Tijuana, where she made the kids spaghetti for dinner. She's also house-hunting in Mexico. Lastly: There's a two-page feature on Abigail Spencer, who plays Suzanne Farrell — aka Don Draper's mistress — on Mad Men.
Grade: D- (poppy seed stuck in teeth)

In Touch
"Running Back To Jen."
Brad got into a motorcycle accident, but the real news is that he was on his way to a "top secret meeting" with Jennifer Aniston. In other words: Brad was trying to get to Jen and away from Angie so fast, he had an accident! According to sources, Angelina is "not liking" the independent streak that Brad has been showing lately, and Brad realizes that leaving Jen for Angie was "hotheaded and dumb." A "pal" says: "They had a whirlwind affair and he was following Angelina around like a love sick puppy for a while." But now? "He sees her for nasty, calculating person that she is, and he wants to leave. It's terrible, because he feels trapped." Next there are disturbing photos of RHONJTeresa Giudice's new baby wearing feathers and leopard print. (See image 10). Ashlee Simpson "cried in her dressing room" after getting the boot from Melrose Place, poor thing. Jon Gosselin has agreed to star in a "cheesy" new reality show in which he dates Nadya Suleman. It will be called Jon - Kate = Jon+ Octomom. BREAKING: "Katie Holmes returns to her sad life in Boston with Tom Cruise." BREAKING: Susan Boyle is younger than Madonna. (See image 11). Lastly, Matthew McConaughey's kid is just a tiny version of Matthew McConaughey. (See image 12).
Grade: D (pineapple string stuck in teeth)

Us
"This Time I'm Sure."
The guy from The Bachelor proposed to Meilssa Rycroft, then broke it off and got with the Molly from the show, and is now engaged to Molly. Or something. We didn't read the story. Moving on: An Melrose Place insider says they hired Ashlee because they needed a good name for "buzz," but she was embarrassingly bad. Another source says: "She's the worst actress, but nobody will tell her." The spread called "Tinseltown Transformations" is the best thing we have ever seen and proves that everyone you suspect had a nose job (coughTyracough) actually did. The ones you're not sure about are the ones with really good surgeons. (See images 13 and 14 ). Madonna gives Jesus expensive presents when she regrets being nasty to him. She bosses him around, feels guilty later, then buys him stuff like hand-tailored silk shirts. Ryan Gosling is still pining for Rachel McAdams. A friend says Ryan considered Rachel the love of his life and hasn't had eyes for anyone else since their breakup. Taylor Swift invited Taylor Lautner to the set of a commercial she was filming and a source says "they were definitely acting like a couple." Next is the amazing chart which proves that Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston are "on the same path." They like Mexican food! They have great hair! (See image 15). Kate Hudson and A-Rod are planning their life together, and A-Rod is "less of a jerk" now that he's with Kate. Apparently the sex is good and Kate "gets graphic" talking about A-Rod's body — "even to her parents." In Jackson kids news, a source says all the guys in the family (Joe; the Jackson brothers) look at them with dollar signs in their eyes — while the women (Katherine, the Jackson sisters) are protecting them.
Grade: D+ (popcorn husk stuck in teeth)

Star
"Tom & Katie: The End"
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' third wedding anniversary is coming up — November 18 — which means they can "renegotiate their marriage contract"! When they got hitched, Tom had a 100-page document drawn up, spelling out everything from Katie's clothing allowance to a cash bonus for having babies. She wants: A bigger clothing allowance; for Tom to find a movie for her to star in; and another Broadway show. She got a $3 million "gift" when she had Suri, and every year Tom increases the additional offspring prize offer as an incentive for Katie to get pregnant. This year he's prepared to bump it up to $5 million! Tom wants Katie to get pregnant NOW and every week he reminds her that she is 30 and her biological clock is ticking away. Her dad's a lawyer, so she talks to him about the contract and is holding off on the baby while the deal is being made. If Tom and Katie don't work out the contract, they could split and fight over Suri — plus, Katie could "spill some of Tom's dark secrets." Next: New Line Cinema is supposedly casting a Jon and Kate movie, and would like Cameron Diaz for Kate and Johnny Depp for Jon. Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel were photographed together recently, and Rihanna got a ton of calls asking if she'd seen the pictures. She "flipped," because she's really into Justin. When she emailed him and asked him what was going on, he said he was trying to work things out with Jess. Now Rihanna feels that she got played. Kate Hudson answered A-Rod's cellphone, and when he complained, she threw the phone in the toilet. Blind item! "Which divorcée hasn't had a date with a man in months, because she digs the ladies? The housewife introduced her girl as 'a friend,' but now that things are over, she's on the prowl for a new gal to keep her company." This is weird: "Rachel Bilson wears the pants" in her relationship because she and Hayden Christensen went out to dinner and she ordered his meal, picked up the bill, and, "when they left, Rachel even drove!" Brad and Angie's English bulldog, Jack, destroyed a $500,000 Marcel Dzama painting. Jenny Craig spokeswoman Queen Latifah had breakfast in Beverly Hills and ordered a latte, three muffins, a slice of chocolate cake and a cinnamon roll to go. A source says: "She had a guilty look on her face." Maddox has been pushing his parents to get married, so in late September, Brad and Angie had a ceremony at their house, and it was officiated by Maddox. He assigned roles for everyone: Shiloh was the "ring bear"; Zahara was the flower girl, and Pax was the best man. Viv and Knox watched and giggled. Angelina wore a white dress; Brad wore a suit; Maddox wore camouflage; Pax wore a soccer jersey; Shiloh had her sword; Zahara wore a dress and tiara. Moving along: Kristen Stewart did not show up to the Eclipse wrap party and Robert Pattinson only stayed for 45 minutes before leaving alone. Sources say they had a fight on October 15 because Rob told Kristen that he was going back to the UK on their hiatus and wouldn't have time for her. Noah Cyrus, 9, wore a "racy getup" to a fundraiser last weekend. (See image 16). Jen, Jess and Cam are in the center of the "Hollywood Love Swap," surrounded by a constellation of guys (See image 17). Is Heather Locklear to blame for Ashlee Simpson getting fired from Melrose Place? Sources say Heather wanted her gone so it could be her show. Lastly, Miranda Kerr and Jamie King are "skin and bones." The mag writes of Kerr: "Although she refuses to reveal her true weight, Dr. Fisher believes Miranda weighs about 110 lbs." Does this mean a reporter actually called her publicist and asked for Miranda Kerr's weight?!?! Dr. Fisher, who has not treated Miranda, is the author of The Park Avenue Diet. Obviously.
Grade: C- (spinach stuck in teeth)

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• After appearing on The Late Show, a nationally televised program, Anna Wintour requested a "more private table" at the bistro Chat Noir. [Page Six]
  
  
• Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump landed in jail over the night for a traffic warrant. His bail has been set at $15,000 [TMZ]
  
  
• Lily Allen's friends have no problem telling the tabloids about the singer's drunken, slutty ways. Remarked one pal, "She'll hook up with anyone when she's drunk." [3am]
  
  
• Jackie O's half brother, James Auchincloss, has been arrested on kiddie porn charges. [NYDN]
  
  
• A child grows within Mel Gibson's girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. And now it's showing! [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Chelsea Handler has broken up with her live-in boyfriend, who's also her boss. It is, says a source, "such drama." [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Former Hugh Hefner plaything Bridget Marquardt and her boyfriend Nick Carpenter moved in together last week and are already fighting. Sadly, there has been one casualty thus far: Marquardt's collection of Hello Kitty memorabilia. [E!]
  
  
• Danielle Staub from Real Housewives of New Jersey wants a photographer to shoot the cover of her forthcoming memoir — for free! [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Quest magazine removed Walter Noel, whose hedge fund lost loads of dough in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, from their list of high societies best and brightest. [Page Six]

Cohen, the senior vice president of original programming and development at the channel beloved of gays and their hags, started inserting his pretty little face on the tube by hosting the reunion shows of various incarnations of the Real Housewives franchise. Their high ratings naturally lead him to believe that he was the reason viewers were tuning in and decided to give us a weekly dose of wankery on Watch What Happens Live, where he interviews celebrities (about himself) and Bravo mainstays (about how much they love him). It's horrible and we can't stop watching.

Last week featured the sharpened-pencil face of "real" housewife of New Jersey Danielle Staub, finally shedding light on the horrible thing she did to fellow housewife Dina Manzo that made sister Caroline cry on the recent reunion show. We also got a booty call with Andy's close personal friend Sarah Jessica Parker. He asks her questions about the Sex and the City episodes he guest-starred in, and she rightfully doesn't remember. Don't worry Andy, we'll kiss your bruised ego and make it all better.

Our favorite bit is when he says he's going to send SJP some fried chicken so that she can put it in the blender and feed it to her newborn twins. That, right there, is why Florida won't let gays adopt children.

What we love is that everything about him and his show is as obvious as Michael Kors' fake tan. This Thursday he has on his friends Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and designer Isaac Mizrahi, who is cashing his Bravo paycheck when he's not making $10 frocks for Target. So, yet again the show will be all about Andy and his network.

And that's with us. We haven't haven't seen such boldfaced buffoonery on television since Britney and Kevin: Chaotic and look how well that turned out!

Fergie's husband Josh Duhamel was there, though.

Danielle Staub On "All My Children" [SoapNet]

1.) Moms and Their Boxed Wine
After staging an intervention for her son, this woman's family then staged one for her over her Xanax addiction. She didn't want to go to rehab because of the its strict no-alcohol policy.

2.) Does Joan Rivers realize that perhaps she's gone too far with the cosmetic procedures?

3.) Did you like the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion shows?

But it sucks that they never revealed what exactly Danielle "tried" to do to Dina that Caroline was freaking out about. From the way Caroline told it, Danielle took a hit out on her. But that doesn't seem realistic. Danielle sort of hinted at what it might on her blog:

I had no idea at the time what "disgraceful" acts she was referring to. I only found out later what she was talking about, from someone in her own family. I simply gave a phone number to her ex brother-in-law to contact proper people with questions that he had concerning something that was absolutely none of my business. I was asked to give this information to him.

4.) Cop Without a Badge Guy Talks
Danielle's ex-husband, Kevin Maher, who gave up all the dirt on her in "The Book" was on The Insider talking about how Danielle is "a bisexual." She didn't really deny it though.

5.) Promise Piercings
Kids are expressing their love for each other in new and different ways, like piercings…

…And emails.

6.) More Kid Stuff
NYC Prep was alright, but not great, IMO. But I did really like this girl, who is friends with one of the cast members, but not part of the cast herself. She's down town/to earth.

She seems tipsy.

And I love the way she communicates.

7.) Snoop's Statement On Michael Jackson

8.) Snoop Getting Off The Phone




9.) Larry King And "My daddy, P. Daddy"

10.) Reading: With Kathie Lee & Hoda

An interesting/funny/depressing/oh-God-when-will-this-stop bit of news from this whole thing? The guy trying to sell the damn fucktape was none other than "26-year-old" Stephen Zalewski, the fellow from the show who was only dating Staub for the, to quote mighty Teresa, "blow jobs."

Despite the fact that Danielle has said that she was merely a victim of circumstance and did not do the things that were written about her in Cop Without a Badge, The Smoking Gun has dug up federal court records regarding her case. It turns out that, according to plenty of sworn statements, Danielle (real name: Beverly Merrill) was a prostitute working at an escort service, was actively involved in drug deals, and made phone calls demanding ransom from the family of a man she kidnapped. She apparently went by the alias "Angela Minelli," which I love because it was obviously inspired by Who's the Boss.

So what did she do to Dina and Caroline that's worse than extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and prostitution (whore)? Hopefully, we'll find out tonight.

In this second clip, Teresa maintains that her husband Juicy Joe has gay friends and that his gay slurs were just "figures of speech." Host Andy Cohen—who is gay—tells Teresa that her husband's comments were, in fact, offensive.



"Jersey" Girl's Sordid Past [TSG]

The rough outlines of the case are known: Staub's drug-dealer boyfriend kidnapped a client, and Staub ratted him out, cutting a deal with federal prosecutors. That deal was brokered by her boyfriend, professional informant Kevin Maher, who knew the U.S. Attorney in Miami. But the details in the documents are spectacular.

In 1986, Staub went by the name Beverly Merrill, but her working name as a high-end prostitute was "Angela Minelli." She was living in Miami, and one of her clients was Daniel Claudio Aguilar, a cocaine dealer for the Medellín cartel. According to a federal indictment, Aguilar was selling two kilos of cocaine to a group of men for $48,000 in June of 1986. The deal was being "brokered" by Staub's neighbor, Carmen Centolella. Before it was consummated, Staub accompanied Centolella to his apartment down the hall from hers with one kilo to "test" it. When they got there, four men jumped Staub and ran off with the cocaine.

Aguilar blamed Centolella for the robbery, beat him, kidnapped him, and repeatedly called his father demanding $25,000 and threatening Centolella's life. Interestingly, one of those threatening phone calls was made by Staub—we mean "Angela"—herself.

Centolella's father called the FBI, who arrested Aguilar and another man with a 9 mm pistol in their car. They picked up Staub at Aguilar's house with six kilos of cocaine and $16,000 in cash.

After talking to Maher, Staub turned on Aguilar. She pleaded guilty to one extortion charge and cooperated with prosecutors.

This made Aguilar mad! Maher told us a couple weeks ago that Staub was crazy to appear on a reality TV show, because the guy she put away might want to know where to find her: "The guy she locked up was a high-level drug dealer from Medellín," Maher said. "Now he's out. What do you think he's gonna do when he sees her face on TV and knows exactly where she lives? She's got to be out of her fucking mind." That makes even more sense now, because according to court documents, Aguilar orchestrated threats against Staub back then: After she started cooperating with the government; Aguilar's mother called Staub to yell at her, another woman called to say "Your life is at an end, honey,"; her apartment was broken into; and a male called her to say he'd seen her walking her dog and that she shouldn't take "risks" like that. Aguilar was released from prison in 1994.

During and before the trial, Aguilar's attorneys tried to attack Staub's credibility by pointing out repeatedly that she was a prostitute.

And two years after the trial, while Staub was out on probation, a doctor wrote the court to advise that, given her "drug history and her former drug lifestyle," she should remain in a court-mandated rehab program.

And that's the story of how New Jersey's sweetheart used to be an extorting coke whore. Read the whole thing here. Really.

In America, everyone just wants to be housewives. As true today as it was in 1958. As evidence, the season finale of Real Housewives of New Jersey won Tuesday night's ratings battle not just in cable, but in regular network television. OK, not in terms of sheer millions of viewers, but at least in terms of young adults. 3.48 million folks tuned in, earning the show a 6 share in 18-49ers, the highest of the night, from any show on the air at the time. Pretty remarkable. Also, pretty goddamned depressing. [Variety]

Poor, heart-faced Reese Witherspoon will soon be taking a deep dive into the horrifying annals of the pharmaceutical industry. Well, not that deep. She'll star in and produce the comedy Pharm Girl, about a wide-eyed young dreamer lady who gets beaten down, hilariously!, by the byzantine and morally corrosive machine that keeps people on unnecessary drugs for their restless legs because everyone wants money. Terrific. [THR]

Yay, we're gonna see it! We're gonna see the "stark" pre-WWI drama about a wicked boarding school directed by shock auteur Michael Haneke (the brilliant Cache, the unnecessary Funny Games)! Sony Pictures Classic has picked up American distribution rights for The White Ribbon, which recently won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. Oh, and it's in black and white. So. Popcorn flick! [Variety]

Shantel VanSanten, yes the Shantel VanSanten, has joined the cast of the CW's bizarrely successful workhorse series One Tree Hill. She'll play the sister to some other character and I'm sure there will be romantic polyhedrons and everyone who's watching at home will just wheeze and fart and take another hit of Munchos. [THR]

Oh good. The Travel Channel has picked up a reality series called The Streets of America: The Search for America's Worst Driver. It will pit a bunch of terrible drivers in a battle royale in the streets of Los Angeles. Winner kills all. It will be the highest employer on television of women and Asian people. DRIVING JOKES! [Variety]

Perhaps sensing the acrid, cotton-candyish whiff of defeat in the air, fading megastar Tom Cruise has reteamed with Jackie Joyner Abrams to produce the next Mission Impossible flick. No, he's not yet signed on to star in the flick, which would be the fourth in the franchise, so that's still cast in some doubt. Abrams is also not onboard to direct, as his threequel was a box office disappointment. Which is a shame, because it was, in strict movie-makin' terms, the best of the series. Sure MI one was fun but Brian De Palma is also kind of a hack, and we all know that John Woo's ludicrous MI 2 was an execrable failure, so really, MI 3 was the best. Hands down. You just can't beat that opening scene with Phil Hoffman (we're best friends). Anyway, the two might reboot the whole thing and do an ensemble approach, which they tried with the first one (Kristin Scott Thomas! Emilio Estevez!) until Tom Cruise got greedy and hired Jon Voight to kill everyone. [THR]

Aw, old ladies are funny. Sigourney Weaver (did you know that when she and Meryl Streep were at Yale together, Sigourney was the perpetual underdog, always overshadowed by the genius acting machine that is Meryl? It's true! And, sadly, it still sort of is) and Blythe Danner have been cast in the new Simon Pegg/Nick Frost commedia dell'arte, Paul. Flick is about two science fiction dorks who travel to Area 51 and discover a real alien. Then Sigourney busts out and screams "Get away from them, you bitch!" and kills Paul with her Exosquad suit while Blythe stands in the corner nervously reciting lines from Suddenly Last Summer. Oh, Greg Mottola is directing it, so there will probably be dick jokes as well. We're excited. No, really. We are. [Variety]

Image of Tom Cruise pretending to like basketball via Getty

When first we saw our girls last night, mighty Teresa had the servants unfurl the banners, the fountain creaked into life, various scullery maids and houseladies scurried about, making preparations, while the Queen de Medici herself stood anxious in the foyer, rubbing little imperfections off the granite walls with her stubby little thumb. See, Dina was coming to tour the new palace built of cash that Teresa now rattles around in, and T.T. wanted everything to be just right. As the heaving three-hundred-pound door swung open and Dina stepped in, she was smacked in the face with the stench of money and marble. Everything was shiny and smooth. Teresa lives at the Sheraton near the airport. I half expected Dina to walk up to a counter and check in with somebody.

As the tour went on, Dina became more impressed with the opulence of the chateau. Teresa was so proud, relaying how she had designed everything, how there would be two grand chandeliers there, a beautiful twisty column here. It was a house designed by someone who doesn't understand anything. Really, anything at all. She just sort of blinks and breathes, waiting for the wind to blow her in one direction. I'm amazed she can tie her shoes in the morning. The coup de grâce of the studio tour was a visit to the wine cellar where Teresa's squat bulldog husband will make various wines and hopefully not explode himself. Teresa was proud of a little sign that hung on the wall that made it seem like a real vineyard or restaurant or something. She pointed at it, smiled. There it was. A little sign. She liked it. She liked it a lot. Sometimes she'll be driving somewhere, on the highway or just through the woods, and that little sign will pop up in her mind. And she'll smile then too. The Giudice family vineyards. Ristorante di Giudice. It's her favorite sign.

Dina thought the wine cellar smelled bad, so they decided to leave.

So they went outside and sat at a table near the fountain, the staff grooming the green, green grass, an old yardswoman shooing away birds with her big white apron, the lazy Italian sun dolloping pockets of light on everyone through stands of skinny cypress trees. The ladies sipped wines and Teresa yammered about how she wanted to have a big housewarming party. The only problem is this: the house isn't ready! So she's decided to have a housewarming party at her favorite ristorante. Dina smiled that mean smile of knowing everything and said "OK." Teresa then informed Dina that she was planning on inviting old Garbanzo Bean herself to the upscale soiree. Because, um, it was her idea! Sure, sure her idea. Allll her. There was no one else, off camera perhaps, pulling those strings. Dina frowned then smiled then frowned again and gulped her wine. She looked off, out onto the Umbrian hills, rolling out like shadowy curves of a post-surgery woman. In the distance she saw four people, kids really, running wildly into the hills. They were fleeing the plague, she realized. They'd stay up there, making love and reciting poetry and being young, while below them the city festered and died. Teresa's cat, Boccaccio, curled around Dina's feet. Everything felt very familiar all of a sudden. The world was ending.

After a small pause, Dina turned to Teresa and smiled yet again. "It's good wine," she said, nodding. "It really is." And Teresa beamed.

Over at Jacqueline's sad deflating funhouse, there was much talk about grades and automobiles and odd, lumpy daughters who feel they deserve everything when probably the exact opposite is true. Jacqui's well-reasoned parents were in town from the sizzling horrorscape of Las Vegas, and darned if her dad wasn't sensible and smart and wise. What he, a retired army colonel, must think about all this brown and stone and Botox and bullshit is a wonder. I'll bet it makes him sad. Sad that he's eager to get back in the RV and watch New Jersey fade to pebble size in the mirror. Sad that his daughter suddenly woke up one day speaking a whole different language, that she was separated from him suddenly by a thin sheet of onyx. Where do people go, when they disappear? They go to New Jersey, I guess.

Anyway, Puffenstuff has been doing well in charm school and there's that blazing white Jeep Grand Cherokee just collecting dust in an old dingy warehouse that Jacqui's husband suspiciously has access to, so maybe we should just give her the damn car?

Give her the damn car they did, and as it rolled up into the driveway, gleaming white like a blimp made of bird poop, Puffenstuff clapped and jumped and wept and moaned. "How long have you had this???" she squealed. Jacqui grinned and said "Remember that day you got upset? Well, Daddy felt bad for you." And then, really, everyone seemed nice and normal and happy. Puffenstuff called her stepdad "Dad," which is nice, and laws were laid down about when the turdmobile could be driven, what her responsibilities were, and Jacqui's father stood with his arms crossed, watching the whole thing unfold. And he thought to himself She may as well be driving away in that thing right now, because it all felt very far away from him in his slacks, standing next to his trusty old lady. Ah but the pine trees swayed and it was time to go inside for dinner and so everyone did, Puffenstuff giddily eying the car keys the whole time, a new itchy urge suddenly full bloom inside her.

Over at Dina's rambling, ramshackle pile of bricks, it was time for Lexie to grow up and throw out her approximately four and a half million stuffed animals. They filled bags and bags and bags with the creatures—little stuffed purple bats named Leon, a giraffe named Sue with a lazy eye and a drinking problem, a pair of lions who had fallen out of love some time after the last cub was born, a sneaky little stuffed monkey who takes pills in wee fistfuls, an elephant named Gladys who's quiet and dull. Out and away went all these plush lives, back to the landfill mystery that had created them, or, one hopes, to a charity. A child always has use for a finicky triceratops named Albert or a stuffed flamingo who has dreams of being a dancer. But then that child gets older and they're just stuffing in a bag, replaced by important adult cares, like bubbies. Bubbies are way more important than you, Dennis the epileptic alligator. Sorry to say it.

Elsewhere poor Garbanzo showed her even poorer kids her modeling photos. Unfortunately they were all blurred out, but you could tell from the girls' expressions that there was something primal and horrifying about them. Danielle talked wistfully of modeling, and planted a seed of hope in her girls' hearts for their futures. But she also cautioned that it's a tricky, dangerous game. Suddenly it's 24 years later, and it all begins to seem like a mistake.

Other things happened, I think. There was maybe something with Dina quitting her job and something with Strega Nona, I don't really remember. But it's not important. No, what's important is where we were all headed from the very start. From the first moment we laid eyes on Lady Teresa Giudice, in a preview special months and months and many long months ago. Of course we are heading into the dinner scene, nodding politely at the busboys and waiters standing at attention, observing the paintings on the wall on the way to the private room in the back, seeing our table lavishly set, finding our seats and sitting down, ready to watch the explosion we've long been promised. But first, of course, we had to talk about bubbies.

See, T.T. was being silly. T.T. was clearly nervous that her big fancy grownup dinner party that she did nothing for except make reservations was going to go awry. So she started telling "funny" stories about her husband wanting to pull over to the side of the road and play hide the sopressata the day that T had gotten her new bubbelehs. He's always wantin' it these days! He wants it in the morning, in the afternoon, in the eveningtime too. He wants it on Ferris wheels and rollercoasters, in line at the movies and at the Yankee Candle. He wants it in strangers' beds, in the backs of various vans. He wants it at stationery stores and at the onyx quarry. He wants it poached, fried, and over-easy. He wants it on trolley cars and in the swinging, precarious baskets of hot air balloons. This is to say that he wants it a lot, he wants it all the time. And Teresa just laughs and laughs and laughs about it, while the rest of the guests cackle in Dina's case or shift awkwardly and blush, like poor Albie. Poor Albie who had such screen potential but was given short shrift. Poor Albie who could have been a golden god of reality show arcana but instead is just a sputtered start, a dusty misfire, a meme deferred. Ah well.

Anyway, after all the sex talk died down and the children at the other end of the room stopped having blood pour out of their ears while they wept, it was time for old Garbanzo to pounce. Oh, see, she did accept the invitation and sauntered in late with her two girls and everyone said awkward hellos and Teresa sat the head of the table, slurping wine after wine after wine, so scared that her dinner party was going to go off the rails, and oh if she'd only known then. In the great play August: Osage County (go see it with Phylicia Rashad right now, she's incredible), there's a line that goes something like "Thank God we can't tell the future, otherwise we'd never get out of bed." And oh Teresa, thank God you couldn't. Because then you never would have had this masterful dinner table blowdown, much like the dinner table blowdown that happens in that play! Oh wheels within wheels! Seamus Heaney would be proud.

The Fight:

Danielle reaches into her gaping purse and pulls out a copy of The Book. (The Book is: a tell-all written by an old husband of G's who was an informant for the FBI called The Watcher in the 'Hoods) There it went, almost in slow motion, spinning and plummeting down on that white tablecloth like an atom bomb ready to burst. It fell with a deafening thud and everyone fell silent. Was this it? Was this the moment just before they'd all pause and explode forever? Yes! Yes it was! Garbanzo basically yelled like George's dad on Seinfeld "I have a lot of problems with you people!" and she launched into a tirade about the book, about how the book was shown to everyone in town, how it was brought into the Quaker meeting house that is the Chateau salon "behind the Market basket and next to starbucks" so all the ladies of the canyon could gawp and be horrified. How dare anyone, she shriekingly wanted to know. How dare anyone.

After Teresa had her girls Fendi, Berlusconi, and PrinceSpaghettiDay ushered off into the dark recesses of another room, the fight was allowed to continue. G was aiming all of her venom at Dina, who played innocent and said "I never touched that book!" while Strega Nona began to curl up into attack mode, her glare getting sharper and more focused with each passing, enraging second. In the corner Jacqueline wept and thrashed at herself, tearing at her hair and clothing, shrieking "stop it just stop it please please stop it!!!" over and over again, while the older children shifted awkwardly in their seats and learned a lesson about who their parents are, about who adults are. About how life is full of things that will make you angry and unhappy and some bury it and contain it, and some keep it loose but tight and eventually work their way through it, and then some scream, let it come rushing out like the doom of Herculaneum. Their parents were screamers, they realized. They were more porous than some. Their parents were sieves.

Eventually Caroline made her move and bellowed "I did it!!! It was me!!!!" and everyone knew that she was just circling the wagons to protect her babybird sister, who was still indignant and big-boobed about the whole thing, pouting with a vague smile. Dina thought the whole thing was hysterical. Teresa just kept drinking and drinking, fairly convinced that the dinner party was not, in fact, going well at this point, but maybe there was still hope! If you listen closely, you can hear her start to tell another bubbie story, talking to no one really, but it gets lost under the din of Garbanzo spewing acid from her mouth and Stregz shooting flames from her fiery hair and Jacqueline gnashing her teeth and gnawing on the furniture.

G became more and more cornered, losing traction by the second. But finally Jacqueline, sensing a moment to be a friend and not just a bulldozed sister-in-law, yelled at Dina "Liar!!!!" And she kept yelling, saying that it was Dina that had passed around the book, that it was Dina all along, that it's always been Dina. Always been Dina sending whispers about Danielle over the lakes of Franklin. Always been Dina saying snide quiet things while getting foils at Chateau. Always Dina who comes over to her brother's house and makes jokey little comments about the decor and about the food when Jacqui is sitting right there, I mean right there, and she makes me feel like a little dog or a bug or something, and she's just so mean and I feel like I'm stuck in pudding, like I can't swing my arms or my legs or do anything on my own, I feel like I don't have any bones, and it's all Dina's fault and I—Oh, hah. Where was Jacqui? Oh, yes, Jacqui was protecting Danielle from the Sisters Helliwell and with one blazing look from Dina to Jacqui, you knew that there'd be a reckoning for old J. A reckoning the cameras couldn't have caught if they'd tried, because the howling and light would be too great to capture.

So we didn't really get anywhere on the affair of the book, but at least it's out now. It didn't matter anyway, because the biggest fireworks were yet to come. Teresa was pretty drunk at this point, and as she watched Jacqui set herself ablaze and throw herself crashing through a window, she realized that this wasn't the most successful dinner party in the restaurant's history, probably. And this made her angry. This made Teresa very, very angry and from some new energy pulsating out of her new bubbies, a rage erupted in her the likes of which no one had ever seen. "Book... it's true... prostitution whore!!" she screamed at Garbanzo, who just slightly raised her antennae eyebrows in bewilderment. Teresa then decided to thrash the table, it was all the table's fault, which sent glasses clanking and wine spilling and you were glad that Puccini and Arlequino and Beatrice were elsewhere, spirited away in some place of serenity, because their mother was not their mother anymore. Their mother was a hissing, olive-oil beast with spills of squid ink hair and glowing garnet skin. She continued to scream and lunge at Danielle even as her husband ran up and tackled her and immediately started trying to have sex with her. "Not now," Teresa moaned, and suddenly, just as quickly as it had started, like a summer squall, it was gone.

Garbanzo straightened her hair and calmly collected her daughters. It was time to leave. She'd said her piece. And then she'd had a table thrown at her. Caroline and Dina stayed close together, glowering and hissing at poor Jacqui, who was just lying in a smoldering heap on the pavement below, her nice, beleaguered husband sifting bravely through the ashes. He found her wedding ring, put it in his breast pocket, and walked off into the evening.

Teresa and Bulldog made quick rabbit love in the broom closet and then collected their three cara mias and it was back to the marble mansion. Back to slip on those floors and imagine those chandeliers. As she was leaving, Teresa told us that she considers herself "a classy person," and you felt so bad for her then. That she'd tried to have a nice sophisticated dinner party so the viewers at home could see how upper crust she is, but all it ended up being was sex talk and a table fight. It's a sad thing, that. But oh well.

So here we are. Done. Done like dinner. Done like Dominick. We got tiny little uninformative updates about the girls. There are babies being had and jobs being quit and all the things that happen in lives, all over the world.

I wonder what the girls think about this short, truncated experiment. Was it what they'd hoped? Did Danielle find her fame, did she find the recognition she's always craved, all these years? Did it make her daughters love her more or less, did she find a man, did her face finally settle, did she give up the ghost of 20 and embrace the fact of 50? Who knows. I suppose we might find out during the next go around.

I wonder too did Caroline feel plucked out from everything. She got so little airtime and not one story of her own. Do her cherished sons sit by the phone, anxiously, waiting for Bravo to call and offer them a series? Does that other one, the girl one, do anything at all? And does Dina stay golden and her daughter weird? Are they adept at the camera, or are they really that kinda... well, fun? Does Jacqueline still get scared of the dark, does the rumble of approaching thunderstorms still make her heart leap into her throat, does the quiet still remind her of that desert that haunted her dreams for so long? That coyote-flecked tundra, that hot merciless thing. In the dreams she'd be running, even though you can't run in dreams, she was running through the brown dirt deserts of Nevada and finally, after miles and miles and miles, she'd spot what she'd been looking for. As she approached it she'd begin to make out its form: a person, small, brown hair. And as she got closer she'd realize—with a terrible dread, with a snapping elastic hope—that the figure was her, but older. It was her she'd been chasing down in that desert for so long. I wonder if she still has those dreams.

And I wonder of Princess Teresa. I wonder of that castle that she built. The house must get cold and lonely sometimes. All that echoing. What will it be like once Gia, Gabriella, and Milania grow up and go away? When those black tendrils have faded to gray, when the Bulldog just keeps expanding in all the wrong directions. That house, fashioned from marble and granite and onyx, is forever. In Italy you can still find the Roman ruins, built of similar stone, and though they're weathered and beaten, they still remain. Is that what Teresa the Master Builder was building all along? A permanent fortress, a buttress against time. Something that will stand eternally, there in New Jersey.

Among the pines and maples, the quiet roads rolling into busy, ugly towns. The names, Elizabeth and Edison and Princeton, the Lakes, the caucus of seas. Among the tollbooths and turnpikes, the drawls and the stutters, the pinched features and orange hide, the wish to make rougher things smooth. The shore, the casinos, the Devil.

The Jersey Devil who stands somewhere in the Pine Barrens, heaving his heavy breaths, his eyes glowing dim red, the dark pulse of this fearsome state. And he thinks about them—about Danielle, about Jacqueline, about Dina and Caroline, about Teresa—and he worries. He worries the worry of any old thing, he worries the worry of time slipping away.

The Devil, you see, worries that he's been replaced.

In an interview the sleazebag gave to Star, he said that he has lots of footage — the two of them together, Danielle by herself — that he's looking to unload in order to recoup some of the money that he gave her while dating:

"She tries to look affluent, but sometimes she couldn't pay the household bills or buy food. Even then, she'd want to borrow 20 grand from me to buy jewelry!" Now Steve is considering recouping some money by selling steamy naked videos of Danielle! "I'm definitely weighing my options as far as selling them and getting them out there. She cost me so much money, why shouldn't I make a few dollars?"

Ugh. He also tells the mag that Danielle loves having sex in public (which we kinda knew already), and the locations included her patio, public bathrooms, a police firing range, a park... and a church.

How did Danielle not think this sex tape would surface? It's one thing to want to try and suppress your shady past (even though it's been widely noted), but making a sex tape while your filming a reality show with a guy you end up dumping on television? She must be incredibly naive, or know exactly what she's doing, as far as marketing herself. Either way, it's unsettling.

More on this in Midweek Madness, and the Real Housewives finale recap.

RHONJ's Danielle: Sex Tape Bombshell [Star]

Teresa de Medici has a problem with boobages. You see she's just a bit bee-stung, mosquito-bit. There ain't much there. Though her hair spills out of her workmanlike head in soupy tendrils, like squid ink pasta through a colander, and though her ass has been bouncing a steady series of quarters since the early-late 80s, something is still amiss. Her husband, who Teresa sagely and seriously describes as an ass guy, doesn't much care. He's too busy, I dunno, goin to work, to care about such things. But hey, happy wife, happy life. So if T.T. wants some bears? Go get 'em.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We must start somewhere towards the very beginning. Back when silicone hadn't been scooped out of the valley and stuffed down some lady's front like two oversized crumpets into a toaster. Before all this, the ladeez were going to Atlantic City. You see they really needed a break from all the wear and tear of swimming around in giant vats of white wine, which is what they do when they're not in A.C. Freshly brined and tanned, the ladies—Strega Nona the Brave, Dina the Darling, Teresa the Titless, and Friend the Forgettable—trotted off to some fancy dancy hotel/spa kinda place that almost looked like Las Vegas, even though it was in Atlantic City, which is sort of to Las Vegas what an old tractor behind a barn is to Monte Carlo.

The girls didn't do much. They sat by the pool and Teresa cooed about fancy drinks and Dina apologized for her weirdo friend and Strega Nona just looked stern and bird-like, alert and vigilant. One begins to suspect that perhaps Stregz wasn't kidding when she espoused her "I'll fuck you up" attitude about protecting her and hers. One begins to suspect that perhaps Streg goes looking for conflict, her balled fists twitching and whirring, aching to be used. "Just gimme one good reason...." she'll say menacingly to a cowering El Salvadoran cleaning lady. An angry bulldog of a woman. An Italian pitbull who remembers Napoli.

But what the ladies did best was shop for jewels. Diamonds and emeralds and rubies and sapphires and more diamonds and rhinestones and garnets and amethysts and opals and diamonds and pearls. But mostly diamonds. Mostly Teresa wanted diamonds. "Hey guys... what do you think about this bracelet?", Teresa whined, holding up a fly strip of diamonds. "It's two hundred and eighty thousand." Dina smirked and just rolled her eyes. Teresa, having been half serious about actually maybe buying the gaudy thing, smiled stupidly. The bracelet glittered, like two houses for low income families dancing in the sun. Teresa then tried on a million dollar cat o' nine tails made of diamonds. Oh, how I wish she'd bought it. Just to see her try to count out a bamillion dollars in cashmoney hundreds. "Wait... lemme start over. One one hundred, two one hundred, three one hundred..."

Back in the austere hamlet of Franklin Lakes, a bug was zipping around and pestering two young girls. "Mom, stop it!" Garbanzo's daughters moaned, satisfied finally when their mother alit on a bed and began gabbing to them about boys. See what happened was this: G's little boytoy, Stilwell Angel, was actin' all kindsa shifty. See he's a very young 38, and Garbanzo is in her late 70s, so it just wasn't really going to work. Also, Stilwell Angel was jeeping on her with another laday. He called Teresa, being an associate of her husband's, and asked if he and this galpal could use T's Jersey shore house. Teresa wondered about Garbs, but not too much, and basically said OK. In the background, Dina smiled wickedly. Anyway, G knew somethin' was up so she took Stilwell out to lunch and, after affixing his bib and cutting up his hotdog for him, it was time to end the relationship. Just because, you know, they were going different places. She was going toward stability and a new chance at love and the tumble of years that would be her two pretty daughters growing up very fast. And he was going towards the Jersey Shore with his friend Lisa in like an hour so could we hurry this up maybe? Eyebrows telling no secrets or lies, Dina smiled sadly and helped him back into his PowerWheels and watched, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, as he puttered off down the road and disappeared. She heaved a buggy sigh. How things go sometimes, huh?

Back on the bed with the two girls, G decided to break the news that the affair had ended. The girls seemed unfazed, in a war-weary way. G promised that Stilwell wouldn't be like the other men, that he'd come around and say hi to the goils and whatnot. They didn't believe it. He'd be just like... oh we shouldn't say his name. Garbanzo didn't want to say his name. But then like a chickadee chirping quietly out of winter, while the snow melts, the littlest G said "Like Jay." Yes, like Jay, everyone agreed. The mysterious Jay. Who was he, I wondered. This Jay. I'm sure we'll figure it out, eventually.

When all had been packed up and purchased, villas paid and maids untipped, the ladies left beautiful A.C. for ruined, desolate F.L. Back at home, Teresa had very important things to consider. All of the girls had been telling her to get boobages. Because it would make her life happier, because it would complete the package, because if you don't partially announce the rest of yourself when turning into a room, you could be attacked by a paranoid husband. It's very possible. And also because why not, you're bored and rich and your marble palace has already been erected and sometimes, when Albergo and Lunedi and Cimabue are asleep, the place is just awfully quiet. Too quiet. Bubbies would help that. Bubbies would be friends. They practically talk.

The only person who was a bit against this was Dina. Dina got enormous breasticles because her husband, genetically different from T's, is a chest man. So Dina hates them but it makes her husband happy, so what can you do? You can't play tennis, that's for sure. Dina insisted that Teresa didn't want huuuge ones and Teresa agreed, because there is, to quote Dina, a line between tasteful and tacky. The idea that any of these women have any perception of what either tastelessness or tackiness are makes me chuckle with sad, drunken laughter—a sound like a platypus burping, or calling out for help while having a nightmare. A terrible platypus nightmare.

Of course the most important person to discuss this with was her husband. And her three small children. Setting a good example of how girls should be—and let's face it, Teresa has already done such a bang up job, wasn't watching little actress child Camorra primp and preen at the dinner table like all those girls you hated in high school and college except she's like six just so heartening?—she decided to discuss the matter at the family's favorite Italian restaurant, Quiznos. She told the girls to cover their ears and then yelled "Boobs! I want boobs!" and her husband just chuckled awkwardly and stared at a small red stain on his pants. Fuck... Gotta burn these, he thought.

So with his blessing Teresa trotted off to the boob clinic with her friends in tow. They all guffawed and whinnied at the smarmy doctor and very important medical matters were discussed. Would they feel like bags of sand? Do they fall off or get scared during thunderstorms? Can they see into the future? The doctor chuckled and smiled. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "Of course! They do all those things. And more." After the girls watched a grainy educational film about how one's new bubbies can also solve mysteries and govern small island nations and recite Pi to a hundred places, Teresa was prepped and ferried off to get the insertions. A funny moment happened when she was drugged and the nurse tried to have her count backwards from three. From three. But old T.T. couldn't do it. Because she can only count upwards, in increments of a hundred. So instead she mumbled something about her friend sending her a text message and then she whispered, strangely and ominously, "Fidelio..." and then she was out. Out cold. Like an oranging pimento loaf, sitting in some forgotten, dusty deli counter in Edison.

After a long recovery, Teresa finally awoke and asked what size she was. A healthy C. Just like she'd sorta wanted. Her husband shuffled in and said "Oh, you got somethin' there now" and Teresa smiled and maybe slowly started to realize that this was all terribly silly. Had she been kidding when she said, as means to "preplay" (she meant foreplay), that she was considering putting a stripper pole in the bedroom? She didn't even know anymore. But now that she had these things—these inert puppies, these sacks of chemical, these blimpy over-leavend kaiser rolls—stuffed into her body, she might have to start acting some part. Would she need to sleep with sweaty, stenchy teenage boy gardeners? Would she need to lean over and purr at Parent/Teacher conferences, trying to secure good grades (and a bright, bright future!) for little Lazio? She suspected she might.

Speaking of good grades! Sad deerbaby Jacqueline decided it was time to be tough and really crack walnuts and ask her aging daughter Britannica about her summer school grades. She and the child were already on rocky terms, because of a disastrous photoshoot. See, like any wayward teenage girl who's suddenly thrust in front of television cameras and told to be interesting and charming and most importantly pretty, young Britannica has decided she's pretty curious about modeling and acting. Many young people are curious, even covetous, about such things, but because Bravo's there, sifting through the sausage-stained wreckage of her life, she now has agency to misguidedly pursue a career in the self-centered arts. So Jacqui took her on a bigtime modeling photoshoot. The photographer had one time photographed one of the America's Next Top Model girls and if that doesn't spell success, it at least spells suces. Moored there against a gray backdrop, listlessly banging into it and being startled by a fan, the poor dear didn't seem exactly a natural. And when she saw the prints! Oh how she mooped and moaned. She just didn't like them. The photographer smiled piteously. Because he knew that when Brit sat there at the bank of monitors and gazed longingly, disappointedly, at what she saw... Well, he knew that she was really, fundamentally, unhappy with something more bedrock and immovable. And she knew it too. And everyone knew it. But we all just pretended. The next photoshoot! That one will be better. The future will always be better.

Anyway, Jacqui still demanded to see the grades and, lo and behold, they were actually good. She even got extra credit on one test! So Jacqui smiled and barked a happy bark and little Brit said "Now can I have a car...?" And even though, yes, there was already a car waiting for her in a warehouse, Jacqui played it cool for the first time in her life and said "Well, this certainly helps your cause." And you could see that glimmer of satisfaction dance across her face. How strangely fun and empowering it was to be an adult sometimes! How nice it was to feel traction under her feet. Sadly her moment of triumph was ruined when, nearby outside, a car backfired and poor Jacqui widdled on the floor and then ran behind her hiding chair and cowered and shivered. The world was still a scary and menacing place sometimes. Brittanica just stared at the yellow puddle and blinked slowly. A model, she thought. A real life model.

After the noises monsters had definitely moved on and she'd stopped shaking so much, Jacqueline bravely put on her best hat and set out for Garbanzo. You see it was G's 78th birthday, and a dinner was in order. When they sat down, G's eyebrows told no stories, no memories, but still old matters had to be addressed. The book. The crook book. The crooked little book that Dina (allegedly! but I don't care! I love her! like I really, really like her and her weirdo daughter! sue me!) passed around town to ruin G's life. Jacqui, remembering that soaring grownup moment in the kitchen, held firm. "I can't hear about that stuff. You know, it's family. It just isn't right." Garbanzo seemed frustrated, flattened. A fairweather friend, Jacqui was. But a friend, at least. Here's something. So she smiled and said "Fair enough." And they toasted and drank wine and dinner was dinner. An evening was an evening. Just one out of many, one in a year. A birthday, like any other day.

When Garby got home that night she stood in the kitchen for a spell, drinking a final glass of wine, admiring the wooden elephant (they never forget...) that her daughter had made for her birthday. It was a good life sometimes, she thought. Even if it wasn't always full. Even if her dangerously pretty and growing-up older daughter thought that men only wanted her "goodies", even if she wanted something different, sex-wise, for her girls, wanted it fiercely, but was nonetheless powerless to stop it. And then there it came again. That name. That name that turned over and over in her head like balls at a bingo parlor. Like the lottery machines on TV. Jay. Suddenly it just ran up, pushed its way through her lips, desperate to taste some fresh air. "Jay." She said it out loud. That person. That man.

They'd met on vacation. The girls back home with a babysitter. Garbs had found a little extra money here and there and bought herself a ticket, first class, to Mexico. She spent the first quiet days walking up and down the beach, thinking about times she'd been there before, during that cokey carnival that some folks called the 80s. It had looked different back then. Both bigger and smaller. Now it was just... Just a beach. Just beautiful sand stretching to hug beautiful water. And then, one sunset-streaked evening, there he'd been. Suddenly there. In his billowing white twill shirt, barefoot, simple khaki shorts. He'd been a charmer, talking her up, walking her back to the outdoor bar. They sat and drank stingingly sour drinks. He taught her little Mexican words like "cerveza" and "siesta" and she'd played along, acted like she didn't know what they meant even though she did. Pablo had taught her Spanish one dreary October in Bogota. But it was fun to play the game, so she did. And they chatted and drank and ate very little and made love under a canopy and Danielle could feel her whole world reopening. How shuttered she'd been! How skittish and scared! But no more. Past was past, done was done. Here was something. Here was something new.

Before they went back, before New Jersey climbed in and poisoned it like some cursed vine, they'd spent four more days down in Mexico. Feeling the sand between their toes, talking about nothing and everything, sharing sunny, wistful hopes for the way things could be. On the last night, at dinner, he'd reached his hand across the table and grabbed hers. He'd smiled, differently. This was a new one. There's still so much to learn, Danielle thought. "I want you to meet someone," he said softly. "OK," she said. "I'll meet anyone."

He led her to one of the private villas the hotel kept a bit down the beach. There was soft music wafting out from the inside, Huey Lewis maybe. Jay knocked on the door and, after a bit, Danielle heard a gruff, smoky voice say "Just a minute. Just a damn minute." Danielle suddenly felt knotted and nervous. Who was this scary-sounding person—scary in an old, familiar way. Finally, the door creaked open and standing there, all brown and dappled, grizzled and glorious, was a woman, about Danielle's age.

"Danielle," Jay grinned. "This is my sister. I'd like you to meet my sister."

The woman raised an eyebrow. She lit a cigarette. She chuckled.

"Nice to meet ya. The name's LuAnn."

Danielle shook her hand. "Nice to meet you too."

"Well?" LuAnn barked, clapping her hands. "We drinkin' or what?"

And so they did.

Maher told Gawker that Staub claimed to have slept with Don Johnson. Which pretty much makes sense, given Maher's accounts of coke-fueled orgies in Miami in the late 1980s. Miami Vice shot on location there, and the woman Maher describes —the bisexual "paid escort" and stripper who was "messed up on cocaine"—certainly sounds like the type who might find a way to snuggle up to a nearby TV star.

We asked Johnson about the claim—like he'd remember!—and here's what he said:

Not every guy who drove a Ferrari and didn't shave was me.

So true. It could just as easily have been Philip Michael Thomas.

Maher, whose career as a paid informant for DEA, FBI, and NYPD was memorialized in Charles Kipps' Cop Without a Badge, sold the torrid, seedy, and exclamation-pointed story of his marriage to Staub to the tabloid weekly. Here's the good stuff:

Maher met Staub in Miami in 1986. "[She] was a paid escort with a local service, says Kevin, and claimed that she had been with numerous celebrities. She was also a 'raging nymphomaniac.'"

They met cute a party that sounds exactly like you'd imagine a party in Miami in 1986 would be: "Everyone was having sex out in the open in the suite. Beverly was on top of a guy on the couch, but she was looking at me. Afterward, when she went into the bathroom to shower, I followed her in—we had sex on the floor!"

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Unsurprisingly, Maher says they "were both messed up because of all the cocaine we were doing," which naturally led to marital discord. "We'd have big arguments, she'd kick and punch and the cops would come," he told Star. "They arrested me four or five times. Once, they arrested both of us after she slashed my arm with a knife."

As a stripper, Staub did some pretty neat tricks: "She was like a gymnast! She could do anything! One time, on her birthday, she came home with $6,000—and I was sure there were some sexual favors involved."

Sorry, Kevin, we don't believe this one: "Having sex six times a day wouldn't even satisfy her!"

The couple married in 1988, while Maher was still married to another woman. They split the next year. Maher also told Star that Staub was dating a high-level Colombian cocaine dealer and out on $10,000 bail related to an extortion charge when they met. Her boyfriend had held one of his clients hostage for nonpayment, and she was got caught up in the arrest. She pleaded guilty and did five years' probation.

On last night's show, Staub vaguely denied the charges laid out in "the book," saying she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when her boyfriend was arrested and refusing to answer anything else. "Even if I was that person, that monster they portrayed me to be, wouldn't they have picked up on that?" We guess, maybe, sure!

"This book has come to haunt me," she said, "and I have to do a lot of damage control about things that I lived in my life and things that have happened. [But] there's dialogue and dialect written everywhere about everyone."

We were curious so we called Maher and got some more information. He told us that Staub actually put her boyfriend and an accomplice away, and that he's worried they might come looking for her. "She locked up two people," he said. "That was part of the deal." When Maher found out Staub was out on bail, he used his law enforcement connections to cut her a deal.

"You give this guy and another guy," he says he told her, "and I'll go to the U.S. Attorney and get you a supervised release." Staub cooperated, and her boyfriend was sentenced to 15 years.

"The guy she locked up was a high-level drug dealer from Medellín," Maher said. "Now he's out. What do you think he's gonna do when he sees her face on TV and knows exactly where she lives? She's got to be out of her fucking mind." She probably is. But Bravo is not, and Maher says the network should have known that, given Staub's past, letting her pursue her own aggrandizement on their air might have consequences: "How culpable is Bravo going to be when this woman gets killed?" It's a strange argument coming from an informant who put plenty of people in jail and went on to participate in a book about his exploits, but he would know.

Maher also said that Staub is a bisexual, which we guess makes sense in a porny kind of way. "Let's talk about her bisexuality," he said. "She liked strip clubs for two reasons: The fast money, and the availability of beautiful young women around her."

And Maher told us the names of those "celebrities" Staub claimed to have slept with. We'll let you know who they are soon as we give them a chance to respond.

Teresa and her tiny Italian bulldog of a husband both love Dancing with the Stars, so they decided to take fancy dance lessons and, this being how things work on this show, they invited some of the other housewives so everyone could embarrass themselves and we'd sort of cry/gurgle on the couch, wishing we had snacks. But we don't have snacks, or at least we didn't. So instead we watched dancing.

But let's rewind a bit and start, as Richard Marx and Donna Lewis would prefer it, at the beginning. When first we laid eyes on their bubbies, Teresa, wee little Jacqui, and blessed Garbanzo were eating at a retrofitted Olive Garden, trying to debate wine choices. "Do you want red or white?" Teresa mewed. "Nothing too heavy..." said Garbs, raising her already professionally raised eyebrows. I think because she didn't know what she meant. Which was funny! Because I pretend to sniff and swirl wine when I'm at fancy places like Applebee's and I don't know what I'm doing either. I should just start asking "Yes, good sir. I'm looking for a wine that will get me drunk. Do you have such a bottle?" Anyway, the reason Garbz had called this meeting of the Midnight Society was that she knew there were some rumahz floating around about how maybe she likes to steal husbands and do blow off their dead wives' bodies and maybe she once shot a guy and maybe she was in the Witness Protection Program dressed up as a gospel nun. All things that, yes, were maybe plausible, and all in good time she'd address them, Garbanzo said. In the meantime, there was no reason to think that she was unsuitable to be around. That was just single lady persecution. And she blamed the wicked bebubbied Dina for all of this.

Of course she should have blamed the producers, but that doesn't make good TV, does it? Speaking of Dina, she was busy sifting through a pile of brightly colored underpants trying to help her daughter Haley Joel Osment get ready for a trip to Cypress Gardens. Haley Joel was really excited because she'd get to watch the ski show and eat praline cookies. Dina was upset, though, because she'll miss her bespectacled daughter, plus she doesn't want her wearing skimpy bikini tops, lest any swarthy southern belles (who roam the grounds, this is a true fact) abscond with her. Haley Joel just chuckled softly at her silly top-heavy mother and they both stroked the hairless cat and we all dry heaved a few times because it looked like they were petting the fluke worm from that one episode of X-Files.

Then it was time for dancing! Everyone was there. Teresa and her husband, Bulldozer. Caroline and her two cherubic sons, Albie and Failure. Garbanzo and her... um... antennae. Everyone cooed and clapped when some old dude standing in the corner was introduced as the father of one of the guys on Dancing with the Stars. It's like when I met Megan Joy Corkrey's second cousin and I wet my pants. It was that big of a celebrity encounter. The music started and everyone got into first position and for the next forty two minutes we were treated to what Joan Acocella might call a fitful dreamscape of unresolved moments and unexpected, vaguely dissonant tableaux. The Housewives Dance Show will probably travel through the most important dance venues in the country before becoming a smash on the creaking stages of Paris and the floors polished by legends of deepest Russia. I had no idea what fluidity Caroline had in her arms. It was like watching a swan give birth to an angelic hairless cat made of gossamer. I wept openly and tore at my hair. Bill T. Jones saw it and immediately announced his retirement, because really what else was there to do? Somewhere in the murky parts of the immortal realm, a man named Balanchine did a sad, graceful bow of recognition and defeat. It was, to put it bluntly, nothing short of an artistic orgasm—prolonged and beauteous, like being slowly caressed by proud Terpsichore herself.

Actually what happened was that everyone just made jokey-jokes, doing the worm because that's still funny I guess, and then doing weird doggy butt slap dances (why, Jacqui, why?) because that's still funny I guess, and then snickering like the little immature brats they are when Garbanzo grand plied onto the linoleum and did a feverish series of punches and jabs, a crossover ballet if ever there was one. See, G. used to be a "professional dancer," which, yes, of course, yes yes yes, means that she went to l'ecole at the pole. So we all weep for her strange display, especially when she manhandled golden Albie, the rays of his perfection emanating from him like smell lines in a child's drawing of poop. But we also clap for Garbanzo for sticking up for the 'mos when Bulldozer started saying some nasty things about them. "This is the gayest thing I ever did," he told his Medusa-like bride. Actually, Bull, the gayest thing you ever did was watch Dancing with the Stars and get so excited about it that you told your wife you wanted to take dancing lessons and have it filmed for her hit Bravo show. So. Also, calling someone "gaylord" stopped being cute when you turned nine years old. But yes, kadooz to Garbanzo the Brave.

Then it was back to Dina, who was absent from dancing because she has an exclusive contract with Merce. She was having a big going away party for little Haley Joel, because... going to Cypress Gardens for two weeks requires a catered affair in which gloopy bowls of cole slaw are unpackaged and stared at with mild horror. At one point beautiful Albie—his body like sculpted honeycomb, hair like Saints Cosmas and Damian themselves had used the Play-Doh spaghetti maker in heaven—ambled up to Haley Joel and asked her "So what's there to do in Greece?" I felt bad that no one said "No, no dear heart. It's in Florida." But no one did, so they just kept talking about these craaazy places called "Cyprus" and "Greece" and Haley Joel said that there was no drinking age and Albie said "You're not a party girl, right?" and I thought to myself... This girl is twelve years old. One hopes it wouldn't even be an option, not even a consideration, that she could be a party girl. But kids these days, who the hell knows. I saw a seven-year-old shooting smack in the flickering fluorescent light stairwell of my broken down tenement this morning. A sad state of affairs.

Then there was a sound like Shirley Temple getting her fingers stuck in the screen door or a family of marmots experiencing a hot air balloon accident. It was, of course, the clarion that Teresa and her daughters—Mortadella, Arrabbiata, e Lamborghini—had arrived. Caroline cooed over them and said that they were soooo cute, and I guess they are. If you think something wrapped in pink packaging and told to be pretty is cute. If you think children who are precocious and prissy are cute. Personally, I like my kids scruffy and messy, covered in a graham cracker and Juicy-Juice film, ragamuffins with wild, unkempt hair. But, that's just me. Dina took the arrival of the plasticine Hanes Sisters as an opportunity to say how sad she is that she can't dress Haley Joel up like that anymore and oh god, she's going to die of water poisoning at Cypress Gardens, isn't she?

Then everyone made fun of poor Garbanzo and her dancing disaster and the children in attendance learned a valuable lesson about how fun it is to talk shit about people when they're not around and how great it is to feel superior and sarcastically wicked. Circles of life, etc.

Finally it was time for Haley Joel to close her steamer trunk and bravely ascend the plank up into the Cunard steam liner she'd be taking down to Florida. Dina fretted and frizzled, and I sort of fell in love with her. She listed a series of horrible diseases that people can get when abroad. Someone she knew named Andrew went to a water park and got a "crazy ass disease." And that makes sense. Ass Disease affects 1 in 5 people who attend water parks in foreign countries. And what about Grandma Nina? She got Lyme Disease from Germany. I pictured an army of ticks sent out by the Nazis. Or a little old lady perusing a knickknackery souvenir shop saying "Ohh... this is pretty, isn't it Hal?" But when she brings it back home, it turns out to be Lyme Disease. "Dammit, Hal. It's Lyme Disease. It's like the time I had that foreign exchange student come stay at the house and it turned out to be potato bugs."

Over at poor Garby's house, she was making sad pizzapie dinner for her two best friend daughters. I felt bad for the lady, who is apparently no longer friends with Teresa. See what happened was that after Bulldozer called someone 'Little Lord Twinkledink' or whatever, Garbz got mad, and spoke up. Bulldozer got angry and Teresa was highly offended that G had dared insult her wonderful, stubby husband. "How dare she disrespect him while he's disrespecting an entire swath of the population!" Apparently G called to apologize to T, but T hung up on G, so now G is having sad pizzapie dinner and telling her girls that they are all alone in this world. While over at Dina's, Caroline and Teresa are gabbing about Garby and everyone's being mean and Teresa is wearing a backwards Kangol and suddenly it all makes sense—the headbands, the hats, the spills of hair. She knows.

Anyway, then of course the bombshell was dropped and The Book appeared. Garbanzo, nee Danielle, nee Beverly Merrill, is in a book called Coke Queens Through the Ages and it talks about how she kidnapped a millionaire and was a stripper assassin and single-handedly ran the Medellin cartel for six weeks while Pablo Escobar was on vacation at Cypress Gardens, and basically Trini, Gabriella, and the gang all think she's a menace. Teresa proved herself to be real foreheadless pit viper, hissing away about her one-time friend, calling her a prostitute, and what... all because Danielle told Bulldozer not to make gay slurs? Terrific, T. I hate you.

Poor little Jacqueline was being played like a chew toy, pulled between her wicked sisters-in-law and buggy Garbanzo. Being ever the clever diplomat, Jacqui went over to G's house to ask about the book, but also to not indicate her fambly. G told her side of the story: She'd been modeling, and came back to visit her boyfriend, and was busted federally. For kidnapping and beating up people and ransom and shooting people and stabbing babies right in the Rick Taylor and trying to kill the Queen of England at a Dodgers game and trying to capture the moon. G's thinking was, if I'm this horrible person, why haven't I been horrible? And Jacqui nodded her poor bobble head and continued on, asking about mugshots and other scary pictures. Jacqui frowned and furrowed her brow and evenly asked, "Danielle, are you the monster that lives under my bed?" Garby looked steely. A strange half smile inched across her face. "I'm not going to answer that." Then G. said "the written word is not the Bible" and I laughed and thought to myself, Well, yeah, but the Bible is the written word.

Garbanzo knew that Dina had been spreading these horrible words about her, telling everyone in the made-up town of Franklin Lakes. She brought it into Chateau and showed Vic and Brucie and Gina and Sandra Q. and Bonnie Leighton down at the ShopRite. Jacqui just Pound Puppied her face and was very confused. The poor dear needs a rest, everyone get out of the room, can't you see she's asleep on her feet? G. and J. clinked champagne glasses and worried about what her controlling family would say.

Over at the Alitalia airplane hangar that is Teresa's new granite mansion, the furniture was finally arriving. Out spilled a couch shaped like a carousel, an ottoman shaped like a pennyfarthing bicycle, the dessicated and headless corpse of Marie Antoinette that was to be propped up in the Great Room, yard upon yard of solid onyx curtains, and, the piece de resistance, a wrought-iron forehead to be hung on the wall. Teresa had the sunny blonde nanny bring over Citronella, Piedmont, and Extravirgin so they could squeal about their closets and jacuzzi tubs and everyone gets to be a princess in this glorious French chateau that's been paid for in cash. Bulldozer came by and said "The fuck do I care about furniture," and then pulled out his wad of hundos to pay the befuddled and amazed and slightly scared furniture movers. Later Teresa's actress daughter La Strada had to ask a mover to get her suitcase full of clothes, but she was worried because his name was Ernesto and she doesn't speak Spanish. "Mama, tu sai che non posso parlare la lingua dei contadini!"

After the clothes had been moved up by shabby old Ernesto, Bellini started on the work of being a weird little child-adult and saying strange things. When her agent/manager/lady who lives down the street and never had kids called, the offer was to be an extra on the Gossip Girl. So, I guess at one point, Milanese was on Gossip Girl. And I never did notice. Sigh.

Meanwhile at Chateau Sing Sing, Garbanzo had her old gay friend Tommy over and they had wine drinks and talked about the bitchy sadness of being in a crime book about women who murder nuns while naked. Garbs once again plead innocent and acted tough, until eventually she cried. She cried because why did Dina have to tell everyone and why did these bitches have to be this way and why did her life have to curl and wander in this direction, because we only get to do this once and now it's all ruin and sad pizzapie dinners. Old gay Tommy looked pitying, but then they laughed. They decided there should be a cage match, a rumble, a fisticuff fumble. So we'll get conflict next week. Oh goody woo hoos.

For a week though, a sweaty languid week of muggy early June, we'll just have to wonder what happens and wait. Dina will stand by the window, a white kerchief pressed to her reddening features. What mysteries, what perils might Cypress Gardens hold? Could there be a waterskiing accident, a topiary catastrophe? Why is a fortnight so terribly long? And why do we love people only so they can leave us?

Caroline will wonder why she doesn't dance. Maybe it's the haircut. Maybe she's Samson and she just didn't know it. She'll wait for Failure to stop herky-jerk dancing and mugging and aping and realize that he'll never be Albie, radiant, shining, dewdrop Albie. With his chin square and sharp like a bald eagle's buttocks. His arms tawny and thick like enormous drumsticks.

Jacqueline will just wait for a baby. Because yes she is pregnant and that is very nice for her. But she'll also lie awake at night, hearing the skitter skitter of the creature, the monster, the plastic-faced being that lurks under her bed. Why do these things always happen to her? First the Langoliers that called to her from the Poconos. And now this. This low cackling goblin, this thing threatening and teasing. What she doesn't know, not just yet, is that creature's name is Adulthood, and it's coming to eat her.

Teresa will wonder if one can actually eat marble. Marble and pasta, marble and pesto, marble and those little cocktail weiners she used to like to eat before Bulldozer came by and swept her off her feet. On summer nights she'd stand on the porch at her parents' house, the street lights buzzing, the can in hand, digging her little fingers in there, eating and chomping. Ugh, how low and base she had been! Hardly even knew what a chateau was then. And now she's the queen. Or a princess. A princess sounds younger. A princess can only go up. A queen is already there. There's something higher to get. She knows it. Diamonds she'll suddenly think. A house made of diamonds.

And Garby. Old Beverly Merrill. The ex-con. The grifter, the drifter. She'll just wait and wonder until the next terrible thing. Until the next shingle falls off the roof. Until a rumor is spread like Oleo over the stale bread of her life. What a mistake she'd made. What a mistake it had been. To try. To want. To run away.

When she was younger, during that illegal summer when she was twenty and alive, she had this one thing she did, when she wasn't modeling or dancing or slung over some leather couch, feeling the cold pounding of love leaving the room. When she wasn't doing any of that, she'd get in her Chevy and drive over to Newark. There was a place, a hole in the fence that some teenagers had cut, drunk and daring one night, where you could sneak through and sit and watch very close, so so close, as the planes landed. She'd sit there for hours and hours, plane after plane after plane. Coming from Brussels or Bangkok or Boston. People escaping and fleeing and coming home in one piece. She loved it, the strange pull of it, the want that would canyon open inside of her when she thought about going. How people go, she would think, taking a pull from a bottle. Some fruity dumb drink. Some wild girl thing she'd long since lost the taste for.

And there was a moment, right as the front wheels whined and leaned down to the tarmac, where it was all light and noise. Everything around her, her entire world it would seem, was so bright and so loud, and she would get this feeling. That all the warm and wonderful things in this overused world were suddenly inside her, a part of her. She would feel, there on the grass, a girl all of twenty, almost inhuman, something else, something special and faraway.

And she realizes now, as she watches the grass and the trees and she hears the blue, ticking silence of her daughters away at school, she realizes that that moment, that near indescribable second—that sound, that fury, that feeling of lifting—that was the closest she had ever come to disappearing.

"I've decided to give an exclusive to Star," Maher said when we called him. "That comes out Tuesday, so I can't talk until then. But yes, I was married to her. She did a lot of things that I think will put her life in danger. She was involved with the drug cartels in Cali and Medellín." That much is already clear from the promos Bravo has been running for Tuesday night's episode and Cop Without a Badge, the 1995 book about Maher's life as an informant.

Speaking of which, copies of the out-of-print title are currently going for upwards of $100 on Ebay, and Maher says negotiations are underway for a new paperback edition. And Maher's exclusive interview with Star comes out on Tuesday, the day of the next episode of Housewives. Everybody wins!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.A representative for Bravo did not immediately return phone calls and e-mails asking for a comment as to why a television network would gleefully (and profitably!) air details of the woman's life under the pretense of a "reality" show when those details may piss off some of the violent people Staub used to run with. On the other hand, it's likely that all those details have already been aired, by Maher himself, in Cop Without a Badge (we haven't seen a full copy yet).

Bravo's bio on Staub says "she prides herself on being one of the first women in New Jersey (and 14th person in the country) to have a Black American Express Card and her history of celebrity hook-ups is one for the record books." She was also the millionth woman in New Jersey to be a stripper and get involved in the cocaine business. Other details of Staub's past are set to be revealed on the show next week.

UPDATE: A Bravo rep got back to us with their stock response to the Staub controversy, the most delightfully absurd work of flack lunacy we've encountered in a long, long time: "Bravo does not comment on the personal lives of our talent." Eleven words, three lies: Guess what they are!

The book, by about felon-turned-informant Kevin Maher, describes Merrill as an 80's coke queen who stripped for a living, and may have been naked dancing it as late as 1992. And her stripper name was, well, Danielle. When they meet at a drug dealer's party in Miami, he describes her thus:

She was brunette. Long, perfectly shaped legs poked out of her leather hot pants just as provocatively as her braless breasts strained against her low-cut blouse." And no, she wasn't wearing any underwear. After she and Maher have "explosive sex," he thinks to himself, "This is a good person. She has no morals, but she's a good person.

Beverly turns out to be a "coke whore." That's okay at first, because Maher likes coke too. But he really doesn't like her sleeping with other guys. So Maher confronts another one of her boyfriends at the Bennigan's in Saddle Brook, sticks a gun in his crotch, and makes him confess. By this time, Beverly Merrill is now dancing at various North Jersey establishments under the name Danielle. Maher, deciding he wants to have a kid but that Beverly isn't "mother material," eventually splits up with her. According to the epilogue, Maher last saw her in 1992 dancing at a club called Shakers in Carlstadt.

So, yeah, sigh. The book also says she was also apparently hanging out, Alpha Dog style, with a drug dealer who kidnapped a rich kid who owed him money.

A quick public records search shows that Danielle Staub indeed used to go by Beverly Merrill, as well as both Danielle Maher and Beverly Maher, as in the Maher who's in Cop Without a Badge. Or at least that someone with the same Social Security number went by all four names at dozens of addresses in New Jersey and Miami.

And via ONTD, someone has scanned two of the pages in the book that discuss Merrill. Read them and weep. No, really, weep.

Eventually the lady decided to shape up and marry rich and start a new life with her two young daughters. But of course then she got greedy and wanted on TV so the truth came out, as it inevitably would. Lessons learned, perhaps.

I don't even know where to start. So, using a fair and balanced deciding method, I'll just see who gets the short straw. And by "straw" I mean forehead, and by short I mean "has none."

Teresa. I'm talking about Teresa. May God Himself strike me down where I sit if I tell a lie. Teresa does not have a forehead. Teresa's forehead went out for a pack of cigarettes one summer day in 1986 and never came home. Teresa's forehead ran away with the circus while its Georgia onion farmer parents watched, all dusty and sad. Teresa's forehead went to Hamilton, maybe? Or was it Middlebury? Anyway, I don't know. They just lost touch. You know, time. Years. These things happen. Teresa and her forehead will probably see each other somewhere random—that's how those things work. On the street or something. Teresa's forehead. We all miss it.

I am being cruel about something a person can't help! Which is not nice. But if only Teresa didn't drag her daughter, Basilica, around everywhere making her be a pretty pretty model and actress, it would be a lot easier to be nice about her. Teresa and Maserati got in their enormous Jerseymobile and clunked it over into Manhattan so the littlest bitsywitsy could be yelled at by an old lady named Wilhelmina. No, this isn't another episode of Professor Fagtime's Fairy Hour for Lamegays Ugly Betty. Wilhelmina is a modeling agency that represents pretty people who'd like to stand in front of a camera and call it a career. Teresa is so jaundiced about her own daughter's only-sorta-cute-but-whooboy-fifteen's-gonna-be-awkward looks that she just barnstroms through and doesn't listen to the Wilhelmina ladies, except when they say "these photos are too pageant." More photos she can do. That she knows how to do. (She doesn't, incidentally, know how to pronounce her own last name. Her last name is Giudice. Which is pronounced "jew-DEE-chay", not "joodeese", T.)

Dina, the one who looks like an attractive and well-timed fart, went to a big bright furniture showroom with her gay brother, Paulette. Paulette simmers Fancy Feast on a hot plate for "celebrities" (one time he touched Marilu Henner, for serious) and calls himself a chef, and also Paulette wears a fancy apron and an artist's floppy hat and calls himself a designer. He does everything! So the two of them, from a big big family of eleven, seem close, which is nice. Dina, y'see, is a bigtime interior decorator, just like the Wakefields' mom, while Ned is off being a lawyer. Dina has eyes that are the color of the Pacific ocean and their brother Stephen plays basketball. Enid Rollins is probably a lesbo, Lois Waller is fat, and Bruce Patman may try to sex you in a pool in book number 3, Playing with Fire. So watch out, Dina! Anyway. Dina is designing a home for some huuuuge celebrity, so call in the gay cavalry and get some approval is what she did. It was a nice scene in which Dina didn't kill anyone, so that was good. Though, in the end, Regina Morrow died of a cocaines overdosage. Which was sad. Charlie Cashman cried at the funeral. Jerry "Crunch" McAllister did not.

Dina worries that her job is getting in the way of rearing her one child, which is a sad worry to have. I think you can do both. You can have it all! Just like Lila Fowler. That bitch is rich and pretty. I mean, c'mon. Who do I look like, Amy Sutton? I'm no fool. You can do both, Deenz.

Oh God, and then calamity struck. The poor childlike empress that is Jacqueline fell down a well and no one could get her out. "It's... It's OK," her watery, echoed cries came up. "I can get comfortable down here..." She was trying to be brave, but everyone knew that she was sad. Because being stuck down in a well, especially on your birthday!, is no fun at all. Poor Jacqueline. While she was down there, she had a conversation with her daughter, who looks like what would happen if Christian Siriano and Zak Orth had a gay buttbaby. The daughter, whose name I believe is Hippilotta Longstocking, doesn't ever go to school and when she does she's dumb, so she's failing Maths, Readings, and Histories. Which means she has to go to summry school, a fate worse than death, lemme tell you. When I was a boy, wearing shortpants and a jaunty newsman's cap, I had to go to two summers of summerschool not because I had to, but because my mother wanted me to. Yep! I took Latin! In the summer. And a typing class, which I oddly loved. Plus, we did plays and there was tennis. So I guess it wasn't so bad. But Hippilotta! You're going to poor Jersey private school summerschool! You're fucked like Tuck Everlasting! You're gonna be sitting on that boring old Ferris wheel alllll summer long. Sucks to be you! Guess you shouldn't have figured you were better than school because you're young and you've, um, got your looks (?). Life moves, girlie. And it ain't gonna wait while you get your shit together. Pretty soon you'll be 30 damn years old and working at the Lancome booth at the mall is going to start to feel like prison. Trust me, I know. One summer my mom made me work at the Lancome booth at the Chestnut Hill Filene's.

Speaking of dumb people and makeup, Caroline Manzo took time from her busy murdering people for opening their dumb stupid stoolie mouths schedule and yelled at her daughter about jobs. See, Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, but wants to halfass it. And Carrie Manzo will not tolerate halfassery. If her beautiful daughter Dr. Giggles wants to do makeups, she's going to own her own Makeup Spa. A primping station for all the lawds and ladeez of Jersey to get in their finest before hobbling up to play courtiers at Versailles. "Let them eat funnel cake!", Caroline is often heard yelling on balconies, brandishing a pistol. And if there's one thing that spa owners have to do, it's do waxing. Because there are no young, impressionable Chinese ladies with families back home to feed who are willing to do that for you. There is no such thing in America as that. Dr. Giggles can't stand the idea of waxing, but if she attends the prestigious Madam Bovary's Refining Makeup School for Ladies (and Bartending Academy), as her mother wants her to, then she has to do waxing. Life is all about hard choices. Life is about doing things we don't want to do, because they'll help us in the long run. For some, that means joining the military to pay for a college degree. For others, that means working two or three jobs so the kids will have dinner on the table. And for some, for the bravest and most humble of all, it means putting hot wax on people's giners and then pulling it off.

That sound of olive oil sluicing through cheesecloth isn't being made by Wendy from accounting making one of her trademark healthy salads in the breakroom. (No, Wendy died in a car accident this morning. I'm sorry.) That sound is actually coming from last night, when Teresa the Pest took her daughter, Puttanesca, to a new photoshoot so her big modeling pictures wouldn't look pageanty so Wilhelmina won't get mad again. Basically it was a horrorshow in which America's youth all fell over dead and then Wendy drove by and while she was gawping at the heinousness she plowed into a tree and now she's dead and who will send out those cute Christmas e-cards this year? Will anyone??? I can't really talk more about the fashionshoot because at one point little Fiat struck a pose in a doorway that could only be described as "come-hither" and it makes me sad to think about it. So please let's just move on.

Ohhh holy Toledo. Gabaranzo had a party. Garbanzo had a party and everyone came. Why someone would voluntarily look like an insect is beyond me. But Garbanzo wants to look like an insect, features wise, and so she does. A bug. Bzzt bzzt bzzt. That's Garbanzo. Garbz had a party that was basically like being invited to the filming of a snuff movie. Everyone—even archnemesis Dina!—came over to sit in a circle and watch in abject terror as a crazed Marathon Men-esque doctor performed bizarre procedures on Garbanzo's face. Dina kept making bitchy quips about how she could never, ever get Botox. And, um, either her face naturally looks like a Fruit Roll-Up or her husband is sneakily injecting her face with horse disease while she sleeps. Because, um, dag. But whatever, Dina bitched anyway. "It just looks so weird," she remarked as Dr. Mengele lowered the circular saw onto Garbanzo's mug. The creepiest thing of all was that Garby's daughters were there, watching in curious horror as their mother had an Eyeball Dampening and a "face tuck," which involved six orderlies, a pneumatic nail gun, and a reading of the Magna Carta.

Later everyone heard a whimpering coming from under the porch and we all realized that poor Jacqueline had gotten herself stuck under there, the dear creature. "Someone get a broom or call the fire department," Caroline huffed, bending over and peering into the narrow space, barely able to make out a bit of Jacqueline's dirt-covered face. "Goddammit, who left the screen door open? I told you this would happen. It happens every time." After the fire trucks left and Caroline gave her a stiff hug and said "Yeah, let's get you some water, huh? It's scary under there, isn't it?", Jacqueline chirped the tale of Despereaux, her daughter Hippilotta. See Hippy just shouldn't get anything new because her grades and all and—oh holy cats, what is that driving up in the front driveway? A fucking white Jeep Grand Cherokee. For Hippy. See, papa Jacqui bought it because you're only an eclair-faced youngster but once in this ultimately-fatal merry-go-round ride, so why not have an unearned automobile. Just steer clear of where Wendy drives when she's been drinking. Poor Jacqueline got sad so she tried to run to Caroline's master bedroom and pee in the same corner of the walk-in closet that she always pees in when she's upset or startled by lightning, but Caroline grabbed her by the collar and swatted her behind and said "No! No! You do your business outside." Later Caroline felt bad so she let her have a piece of porkchop, having her eat it in the mud room. "It's good, huh?" she cooed, stroking happy Jacqui's glossy hair. "Yeah, it's good. And you're good."

It was mealtime then, and so most people grabbed their S.O.'s and trotted off to Varka, a fancy Greek restaurant, to have dinner with friends. Like something Donald Margulies would write when drunk and trying to make Naomi Iizuka laugh (they hang out, I'm sure of it), the conversation eventually devolved into Garbanzo being weird about her boyfriend, Bergdorf, who was sitting right next to her. And... OK. Bergdorf is supposed to be 26-years-old. And, my birthday is on Sunday and I'm turning 26 and I don't care that he's balding or what have you, but fool is NOT 26. Fool is like 34 on a good day. Everybody's all pretending that "ohhh, Garby got herself a younger man" and whatnot. And, yes, he's younger. Garby is a 68 years young, and Bergdorf is 41, so there is an age difference. But if one more person tries to tell me that that asshat is 26-years-old, well then I'm just going to kill myself the day before my birthday. Because I don't want to look like that come Sunday.

But the point is: Garbz is having trouble with the boytoy, mostly because he's not very nice to her. That he doesn't squish her underfoot like most people would do to a bug that shows up uninvited for dinner is, in my book, generous enough. But I guess the G wants more, but more she shall not shan't get, nay. So a day or two after dinner, in a fitful teary state, she called up Teresa and Jacqueline because she needed to talk about breakups. When to do 'em, how to do 'em, etsetrah. No one in the whole world understood why she felt it necessary to bring her kids to Jacqueline's gigantic house, but she did, so they were sent off to dig for old coins in the backyard while the grownups had a young adult conversation. Teresa tried to offer some advice, but Garbs just struck her down, because really she just wanted to hear herself talk, nothing else. Teresa took this as an opportunity to tell us, the people playing at home, that G's 48-year-old boyfriend Bergdorf is only in it for the BJ's. No, Garbanzo is not a member of an economy-sized foodclub. I'm talking about fellatio. No, not that restaurant in Ho-Ho-Kus (although that place is fabulous). I mean that David Crosby likes to go over to Garbanzo's house, unzip his trousers, sit in a chair in the foyer so the girls can see, and then Garbanzo walks in, puts on some Vitamin E lip balm, opens her leathery mouth, and... They all sing a song! That's what happens! La la la. That is it. Nothing else. Ohhh for the love of Trudy Styler, that's all that happens. I'm shivering right now. I'm so very, very cold.

So the world died and dried and shriveled up when Teresa said that thing that she said, but then it brightened a bit and bloomed a little when T went back to Wilhelmina and Old Lady Looks was nice and called the terrible new photos not pageanty and so everyone was thrilled. On the way home, Teresa said "we just have one more stop..." and she pulled up to a dilapidated building where a weathered sign hung in the window, saying "Private Investigator." Teresa sat down at the PI's desk and opened her purse. She smiled sadly, politely. She took a manila envelope out and slid it across the desk. "I need you to find this," she said softly. The PI opened the envelope and saw that it contained one photograph. He looked at it. It was a picture, taken some years ago, of a forehead. He leaned back. This case was gonna be a doozy of a dingle. "OK," he said finally. "I can do that. But it's gonna cost you." Teresa looked hopeful. "I'll pay cash."

At the end of the episode, everyone started to figure out that Garbanzo is a weirdo and a liar and that maybe there is something awful and wicked that she's keeping secret. Caroline, being the feistiest and craftiest and most-connected of the group, decided that she would get to the bottom of this thing. She might not like what she finds, but at least she'll know. Maybe Garbs is a Colombian drug cartel's moll. Maybe she's an informant. Maybe she's just emerged from her pupal state and we should all cut her a little slack. Maybes upon maybes! If wishes were maybes, we'd all be at Rocky Point Park. But wishes aren't maybes. Maybes are other things. They're small and flat and brown. You could skip a maybe across a lake forever.

For now we'll just have to wait, while the sun curls around the Jersey pines and our hearts fill with the particular knowledge that— Hey. Hey! Hold on a sec, it's that damn Jacqueline. Hey! Get outta there. That is my garden and I will not tolerate. Hey! Hey! I swear to God, hold on I have to go over there. Hey! Stop that! Shoo! Hon, call Mr. Laurita and tell him Jacqui's back. Shit, c'mon, get outta there! Goddammit. Goddamn Jacqui.. Hey! Hey you! Why don't you cut that out...

Two weeks ago, we pondered a possible connection between Albert "Tiny" Manzo—the late father-in-law of show stars Dina and Caroline—and an old charge in the public records, against one Albert Manzo, for "interference with commerce by threat or violence." The Manzo family's lawyer later contacted us and said that we got the wrong Albert Manzo. For our part, we've gone back and emended our original Manzo post to reflect that that Albert Manzo is not the one on the show.

Caroline Manzo, the elder stateswoman of the show and the imperial wife of Albert, Jr. who owns the Brownstone restaurant and event hall in Paterson, did the lawyer one better and spoke to The Daily Beast recently, telling them that any of these mafia allegations are dead wrong. That bit about Albert Manzo Sr. being found bound, naked, and shot four times in the trunk of Lincoln Continental? Tragic, for sure, but not mob-related:

In August of 1984 my husband and his family were victims of a horrific crime [Tiny's murder]. To this day, 26 years later, the family does not know the whys or the hows of that event…the real crime here is the assumptions that are made against this family.

In the same Beast article, though, a Jersey prosecutor begs to differ. He says of Tiny:

He was well-known in the Paterson area, and his association with organized crime was well-known. As far as his family goes, his sons and daughters, there's no allegations about them that we know of. But the father certainly was a player in the scene with organized crime.

Basically, like all things (but especially those pertaining to that thing of theirs), the truth seems murky and muddled. And, frankly, forget the Manzos. The mob ties we really want to see explored on the show are those of Teresa, the chateau-building young mama who pays for everything in cash and whose husband is barely present. What's going on there, huh?

Not that we're looking for trouble or anything.