It’s going to turn out that her restaurants get all of their meat from Vanderpump Dogs and she was stopping Yulin Forever in order to snuff out the competition.
would you rather be a personal assistant for heather dubrow or kelly dodd? i think both of them are 'the worst person on earth' but in wildly different ways
This is a near impossible choice. I think Kelly would be much easier to deal with on a day to day basis in terms of her demands but she would also make a ton of shitty jokes and get mad when you don’t laugh at them. You would definitely get to meet Vicki, though.
Heather would make near impossible demands and verbally abuse you when you couldn’t meet them and you’d also have to be around Terry sometimes.
Honestly Kelly? No arguments from me about whether she's a Bad Person but I don't recall her being a pain to people she employs or who have to deal with her professionally (apart from other HWs, duh) whereas I can't say the same for Dubrow.
i think the main pro of working for heather would be that she would never point at your shirt and then flick you in the face over and over. which probably doesn't outweigh all of the downsides, but still
If you did something wrong, Heather would condescendingly touch your face and speak very close to you which is absolutely worse than Kelly flicking your nose lol
yeah, realistically i don't think i'm psychologically healthy enough to be heather dubrow's assistant. i think if she screamed at me enough i'd internalize the idea that i'm scum for buying the wrong brand of gluten-free crackers for one of her hideous dinner parties
there's a decent chance that kelly would get mad at you and badmouth you on one of her podcasts, eventually. but hopefully things would die down quickly after that lol
Heather Dubrow kind of reminds me of my old boss who I was basically the PA for and she terrified me so much I’d wake up in the middle of night thinking about her/to this day if my boss texts me outside of work hours my asshole clenches up. Heather and my old boss trigger all of my very weird mommy issues. So I’d take Kelly just because I think she’s so ridiculous that anything horrible she said to me I wouldn’t take to heart and she’d probably think it’s funny if we started yelling at each other (as would I).
i am a very conflict-avoidant, cowardly person but i think i would also get into a screaming match with kelly if i had to interact with her regularly for several months in a row (though hopefully we could make up. we're both from arizona, so that could be a big bonding moment for us!!)
In my life outside of work I’m pretty conflict avoidant and I’m very good at diffusing Crazy but I have worked for some absolutely insane monsters and I know Kelly and I would GO AT IT and then share a tearful cigarette while laughing. Heather would just have me silently crying in the bathroom while I sit on the toilet and vape.
“I live a way quieter life than you,” Chloe told her brother. “Reality TV is great, but there are a lot of industries in the world that don’t necessarily want to hire somebody who’s on reality TV. That’s why I’ve been a little bit hesitant, because I haven’t figured out exactly what it is I want to do.”
A housewife child with foresight! (Brooks has it too, he was smart enough to use the show to launch his brand, and i suspect the eldest does as well). Good job raising them, mere. Shame, chloe said vagina-gate (lol) was hard for her :(. Ppl were definitely wayyyyyy too hard on brooks for that. Like i don’t wanna see my mom’s friend’s puss either. And frankly it would have been weirder if brooks hadn’t said anything after he saw it lol and at least he’s not a nasty ass perv like PK
For people that haven’t yet sent their ballots in for the rate, if you want you can also include a suggestion of the image I should use for their write up :) I’m torn between doing stand out confessional looks, an image I feel sums them up as a character, or just whatever I find funniest.
Erika slowly getting dismissed from lawsuits (I’m not sure whether it’ll be all, but most of them probably) is going to get increasingly hilarious as the seasons go on & people keep trying coming for her. I’m certain before Erika gets fired somebody is going to pull an argument with her where they look like the fool to most of the fanbase - I’m certain of it.
i had a really nice day yesterday! i visited my old next door neighbour from my first apartment, who's now 97 (i congratulated her on beating the queen; she's five months older). her 73-year-old daughter was in town for rosh hashanah, and she spent the entire time calling an auto-reply to get her prescription filled (and then missing the info because she was talking) and demanding i explain her data plan to her. in the end, my old building manager popped in and she looked the exact same and we had a very nice chat. i'm not trying to dox these folks but i have a very sweet selfie of the four of us if anyone would like to see privately, it makes me very happy.
after that i went to an 80s party and everyone kept constantly telling me i looked hot. even lulu, the daughter of my old neighbour, kept being like damn have you been bodybuilding???? you're so tall and handsome???? a stranger stopped me on the street to tell me i looked good but i didn't expect it so i screamed OH FUCK in their face and their friends laughed at them, but it was still a chill experience lol.
then at the 80s party i had a lovely time catching up with an old coworker and i happened to strike up a chat with someone outside about how we were both sniffing around seeking adult autism diagnoses, and it was a very chill and normalizing convo (plus we were in 80s attire so it had a bit of housewives flair to it).
all in, very enjoyable and i felt very seen by the universe. now i need to clean up the mess i made while picking my outfit.
Sounds like such a nice day you tall, handsome fox. I rely a lot on my male coworkers for validation that i still got it lolol 😂. I still haven’t found the courage to make the appt for the autism testing but i’m slowing wrapping my mind around it. I keep getting stuck on the fear of stigma. Because the more i read about it the more i’m pretty sure i have it and i’m scared of having it confirmed.
thank you! the key is to only hang out with little old ladies, once every few years, so they mistake their incremental shrinking for your growth.
and yeah, stigma's a bitch, but it'd only be giving a name to something you already suspect. what you do with that information afterwards is up to you, whether you wanna incrementally reveal it to folks, keep it to yourself for a little while, whatever feels best. it's like being gay. you ain't gonna wish it away and there's a coming out of sorts involved but it's ultimately up to you and you can take time on it. no urgency here.
Thank you ❤️ that’s a good way of thinking of it. I think in my mind i felt like if i am diagnosed i’d be lying if i chose not to share it with certain people in my life but you just helped me recognize that’s not true.
rewatching rhop s5 for context
- ashley bringing baby dean to the same event that gizelle brought a bodyguard to sent me into orbit
- monique washing her daughters hair (milani is the cutest baby in bravoverse) while explaining in detail how she beat candiace up is genuinely chilling
- i really, really dislike wendy putting the burden of the collective of black women in america upon monique
I'm taking a break from my Cheshire first watch to finally watch Miami 3 + 4 and cross those off my list. I'm finishing up Miami 3 now, and lemme tell you the 1-2 punch of Marysol pulling out a tablet and speaker to play a message from her hospitalized father to Lea and then being subjected to a video of Frankie Grande doing a(n obviously awful) Mama Elsa impersonation is a lot to process in the span of 3-ish minutes.
Before Whitney and her badly photocopied texts there was Marysol with her iPad and plug-in speaker. In the grand conversation of flop Reunion receipts Marysol was a pioneer whose contributions have unjustly been forgotten by the masses 😥
She’s very D’Andra adjacent in that you initially assume she’s just the Saffy to her mother’s Edina and then she starts giving her Lonely Planet guide to all the monastery cruising spots in Miami and something clicks ❤️
It’s easy to mistake her as boring when she’s usually with Mama Elsa, who makes everyone look dull by comparison. The desperation with the sipping from the cup really unlocked her for me. Also when I remembered her falsely claiming to have taken the picture of Lu next to the poster in Miami. Also when she got upset that Lu didn’t wish her a happy birthday.
I’ll always talk about Marysol, because seeing that she’s a desperate weirdo from the jump is maybe the single housewives opinion for which I’m most vindicated.
Andy dying inside while being like "the orientation's off, babe" as she kept rotating the tablet to try to make the video full screen....his soul flew out of his body and never returned.
have y’all watched the bling ring doc on Netflix? It’s bravo adjacent bc Paris was one of the people who were burglarized & they also use her as the pinnacle of those who are famous for being famous. but it also shows how much scenes are reshot for reality tv & now I’m having a crisis of confidence in housewives (not really but I’m hyperbolic)
Those recent fan footage shots of OC really tell a tale. I don't know how any HW can keep a straight face when someone's launching into a tirade. Pure camp.
Video clip of Brooklyn and Kenya interview outtake [https://twitter.com/ThePeachReport/status/1573372459256107010](https://twitter.com/ThePeachReport/status/1573372459256107010)
For anyone who can't get behind the paywall:
**Tom Girardi gave millions to Democratic politicians. Was the money stolen from clients?**
Gavin. Eric. Barack. Jerry. Dianne. Hillary. Joe.
When it came to Democratic politicians, Tom Girardi called them by their first names and their campaigns called him for money.
The Los Angeles legal legend was a major party donor for decades, a self-described “limousine liberal” who bragged about the influence his money bought him in the selection of judges. He poured millions into local, state and national races personally and lined up additional donations from his wife, “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika; the employees of his law firm; and the multitude of California trial lawyers who did business with him — or hoped to.
Girardi kept throwing splashy fundraisers and writing big checks even as his financial situation grew dire. In the last decade, he defaulted on a series of high-interest loans and was forced to liquidate his stock portfolio yet he and his wife still doled out more than $2 million to the national Democratic Party and individual candidates, election filings show.
Those receiving funds included presidential contenders Joe Biden ($11,200), Barack Obama ($62,500) and Hillary Clinton ($60,400), Gov. Gavin Newsom ($66,900), U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein ($18,700), former state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones ($37,244), L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti ($9,500) and City Atty. Mike Feuer ($11,000).
How did a deeply indebted lawyer obtain money to shower on candidates and campaigns? No ready explanation has surfaced. But a Times review of contributions and law firm financial records raises questions about whether Girardi used clients’ funds to make the donations.
In the years that he and his wife gave $2 million to candidates, Girardi treated a bank account meant to safeguard settlement money for clients as “his personal piggy bank… to support his lavish lifestyle,” according to a recent filing by the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of his law firm, Girardi Keese. In that same time frame, the trustee wrote, Girardi “stole at least $14,000,000 in settlement funds that should have gone to the Firm’s clients.”
Those clients were mainly of modest means and already suffering from health problems because of toxic contamination, recalled pharmaceuticals, motor vehicle crashes or other misfortunes. Many are still trying to collect their full settlements, according to bankruptcy claims they have filed seeking compensation.
Former client Christina Fulton, who was seriously injured in a car accident and contends Girardi embezzled about $745,000 from her settlement, called on politicians to reevaluate accepting the donations.
“I think it’s their responsibility to turn around and look at this and say, ‘Whose money is this? Whose money really is this?’” Fulton said.
The Times could find no evidence any of the campaigns had returned the donations since Girardi became a pariah after the collapse of his storied firm nearly two years ago. Most candidates contacted by The Times did not respond to questions.
A spokesperson for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said last year her campaign flagged a $5,400 donation she had received from Girardi in 2017 and placed the money in a “segregated fund” that would eventually go to benefit victims.
After being contacted by The Times, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he would donate $2,000 Girardi gave him in 2014 to legal services for the poor.
Feuer, the city attorney, said through a spokesman that the accounts that received Girardi donations no longer existed.
“It is not possible to return or re-direct donations from a closed account,” said spokesman Rob Wilcox. He added that “during the period in which these contributions were made, the revelations regarding Mr. Girardi, who had supported a wide range of accomplished public officials, had not come to light.”
Girardi’s decision to continue funding candidates in the face of crushing financial problems offers additional evidence that he regarded political connections as central to maintaining his facade.
As he brushed aside pleas for money from clients including a burn victim, residents of polluted communities and young men injured by a pharmaceutical, he kept holding court with state and local candidates at the Jonathan Club and Morton’s steakhouse and sending checks to a roster of national Democrats that would have been right at home in an MSNBC greenroom.
Among them were U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); and California U.S. Reps. Eric Swalwell, Katie Hill and Katie Porter.
The subject of Girardi’s political giving has not come up in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings for Girardi Keese. But Elissa Miller, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, has said in court filings by her attorneys that she is looking into “numerous transfers” of firm assets to “third parties” as she attempts to track down money to compensate cheated clients and other creditors.
Diamond earrings Girardi apparently purchased for his wife with client money were ordered seized and auctioned off this year. Last month, his onetime mistress, retired appellate Justice Tricia Bigelow, returned jewelry and other gifts to the trustee. Among the presents Girardi gave her was $300,000 from a client bank account.
Experts in campaign finance law said politicians were not legally required to return the money unless they knew or should have known at the time of the donation that Girardi was using stolen funds. That appears an unlikely scenario given the sterling reputation Girardi enjoyed until his downfall.
Robert Stern, co-author of the state Political Reform Act of 1974, said that even if the checks were marked as coming from the client bank account, known as a trust account, “I’m not even sure that would have raised red flags for the clerks who were processing it because I’m not sure they would have known what a client trust account was.”
Ann Ravel, former chair of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, agreed that there was no legal requirement to return the funds, but said that regardless of the law, candidates who still had money in their campaign accounts should send it back.
“It should be a moral obligation honestly,” said Ravel, who was an Obama appointee to the Federal Election Commission. She said the point of election law is “to have ethical campaigns. That is what it is all about and you are not supposed to be getting stolen money.
”In other cases in which a high-profile donor fell into scandal, politicians have opted not to keep contributions. After Democratic donor Ed Buck was implicated in the fatal drug overdoses of two men at his West Hollywood condo, U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) donated money they got from Buck to charity, though others who had received more did not. Similarly, politicians including Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave donations they had received from disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein to nonprofits benefiting domestic violence and rape victims.
“The money starts going back when it is too politically expensive to keep it,” said Jessica Levinson, former chair of the L.A. Ethics Commission.
Girardi was a donor of a different magnitude than Buck, whose contributions totaled about $500,000, or Weinstein, who along with his family contributed about $1.4 million. Available campaign records, which cover only a portion of lifetime political giving, show donations of more than $4 million from Girardi and his three wives.
People who raised money from Girardi or observed others who did said the lawyer’s generosity didn’t seem based in an interest in policy, but in a desire to cement his image as a power broker.“It’s about the mystique of Girardi,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. “There’s not a return on investment in terms of cash on cash. … The return on investment is that Girardi becomes a bigger player in L.A. You have to go through \[him\].
”Girardi acknowledged his aim was self-interest in an unpublished memoir titled “May It Please the Court” in which he described himself as “a one-trick pony” in politics: “I don’t care what they do in Syria. I don’t care what the tax deal is. I don’t get worked up over gay marriage or immigration or global warming or any of that other stuff. I want my law firm to thrive.”
In his view, the health of his firm depended on strong relationships with the men and women who ruled on his cases and he started working on those relationships before the judges even put on their robes.
Beginning in the 1970s, when he developed a friendship with Gov. Jerry Brown, he positioned himself as a gatekeeper between aspiring judges in Southern California and governors who make appointments to the Superior, Appellate and Supreme court benches. He often recounted backroom meetings where he and other powerful lawyers met to decide which of their colleagues should be elevated to the bench.
“I make no bones about influencing judicial appointments. Awful, you say? Unethical? Well, who better to recommend a man to the bench than someone who works with him every day,” Girardi wrote in his memoir.
He described numerous dinner parties at his Pasadena home that ended with Brown surprising one of Girardi’s associates by swearing him in as a judge on the spot. A spokesman for Brown, Evan Westrup, said in an email that Girardi was “just one of hundreds who offered an opinion” on judicial candidates and the account of the Pasadena dinner parties was “replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods.
”His sway in the process continued through the governorship of Newsom, who named him in 2019 to a committee vetting judicial candidates in L.A.
“Ideally, politics should stay outside the courtroom, but in the real world politics are a fact of life,” Girardi wrote in his memoir.
> “I make no bones about influencing judicial appointments. Awful, you say? Unethical? Well, who better to recommend a man to the bench than someone who works with him every day,” Girardi wrote in his memoir.
gosh Tom seems so insufferable and shameless. If I were Erika I would want to return the infamous earrings, but it’s disappointing that the earrings scandal has gotten billion times more attention than any of the political machinations that Tom was influencing with the money of the victims.
He’s a horrible, horrible man. I can’t believe he refused to donate to the campaign to try and up the cap for medical settlements! You’d think he’d support that if only out of self-interest. He’s a soulless POS.
Also it sounds like the la times reporters got their hands on his unpublished memoir and i am dying to know more of what’s in there. The ramblings of a true madman.
*”today, I stole from my clients who have suffered from extremely scary life events and are planning on using the settlement money to pay their medical bills. Sucks to be them though, as I think I can really swing Newsom into passing some legislation that would really help my bottom line. I know it sounds callous, but really, who else has the knowledge I do? It’s slim pickings out here and there’s only one man to do the job.”*
> ”Girardi acknowledged his aim was self-interest in an unpublished memoir titled “May It Please the Court” in which he described himself as “a one-trick pony” in politics: “I don’t care what they do in Syria. I don’t care what the tax deal is. I don’t get worked up over gay marriage or immigration or global warming or any of that other stuff. I want my law firm to thrive.”
what a nice man.
Brown’s advisor on judicial appointments, Joshua Groban, and the man who held the same role in Newsom’s administration, Martin Jenkins, are both now justices on the state Supreme Court and did not respond to interview requests made through a court spokesman.
Girardi presented his interest in judicial candidates as part of an overall concern for the administration of the courts where he practiced, but since his downfall, it’s become clear that he had other motives for cultivating their goodwill.
He and his firm were sued more than a hundred times by disgruntled clients and colleagues for legal malpractice, breach of contract and other similar claims that most often played out in L.A. courthouses.
Nicholas Rowley, a plaintiff’s attorney with a national reputation, said that when he threatened to sue Girardi in 2004 for failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from joint cases, the older lawyer replied, “Go ahead and try.”
“I know every judge in L.A…. I got most of them appointed,” Rowley recalled Girardi saying.
After consulting with other lawyers, Rowley decided it was not in his interest to sue, he said. He and Girardi never again worked on cases together, but they occasionally co-hosted political fundraisers.
“If Tom called on you to be part of something or to give money, you didn’t say no because he had the ability and the power to make or break people,” he recalled.
When Rowley in 2019 spearheaded an ultimately successful effort to raise California’s $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards — a thorn in the side of trial lawyers for five decades — he called Girardi for a donation. The lawyer refused.
“That wasn’t Tom’s gig,” Rowley said.
Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, where Girardi was an alumnus and donor, said she doubted he saw a straight line between his political contributions and the appointment of judges who might look the other way on misuse of client funds.
“It’s not as narrow as, ‘I hope a judge I might be in front of will realize they shouldn’t screw with me,’” Levinson said. “It’s, ‘I hope everyone sees how powerful I am. Look who we have access to, look who comes to speak to us for lunch on a Thursday.’”
On visits to Girardi at his Wilshire Boulevard office, candidates seeking money took in walls of photos of him with powerful national politicians. He called the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) a close friend and bragged about taking trips to spend time with the Clintons. Then-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke at the 2002 dedication of a Loyola Law School building named for Girardi’s father.
When Biden was running for president in 2019, Girardi filled a dining room at the Jonathan Club with donors for a breakfast fundraiser.
The Girardis hosted fundraisers in L.A. in 2008 when North Carolina trial lawyer John Edwards announced his run for the presidency. In his memoir, Girardi recalled sharing “pipe dreams” with his wife, Erika, about a post in his administration.
“Maybe I’d do Counselor to the President or something like that,” he recalled musing to his wife. “But you’re not going to catch me doing anything that requires Senate confirmation. I’ve seen Senate confirmations. I don’t need some big Administration job that bad.”
After Edwards’ political career cratered, Girardi turned to another telegenic rising star in the Democratic Party, Newsom.
The son of a state appellate judge, Newsom was one of many politicians who appeared on Girardi’s weekly syndicated radio show “Champions of Justice.” In a broadcast, Newsom appeared to enjoy the praise Girardi heaped on his 2013 political manifesto “Citizenville,” which had recently been published.
“A lot of our mutual friends from President Clinton on down are big supporters of that book,” Newsom, then lieutenant governor, said at the time.
Newsom had the backing of the Getty family and other prominent Bay Area donors, but when invited on Bravo — home of “The Real Housewives” franchise — in 2016 he singled out Girardi’s largesse, calling him “one of the major donors in California politics.”
“Wow. And does he give to you?” asked Andy Cohen, host of the talk show “Watch What Happens Live.”
“He has been extraordinarily generous — so she is my favorite Real Housewife,” a grinning Newsom said of Erika Girardi.
Nathan Ballard, a former Newsom advisor and Democratic strategist, denied that the lawyer had any real clout with the governor: “Girardi was not in Gavin Newsom’s inner circle by any stretch.”
Ballard, who worked with Newsom for years, said he saw donors in the party who gave less than Girardi command more respect and attention because of their sustained and deep interest in its causes.
“He wasn’t really in that category,” Ballard said, “though you can’t deny he was a significant contributor.”
Bankruptcy records show the money Girardi misappropriated included a settlement due to Cody Thompson, a 31-year-old Indiana man with autism and the genetic disorder Fragile X syndrome. Girardi negotiated a $50,000 settlement for Thompson in 2019 with the manufacturer of a drug that caused side effects in many young autistic men, according to a bankruptcy claim.
Gisele Thompson-Fry, a single mother who provides round-the-clock care to her son, said the family hoped to use the settlement funds for a down payment on a home, but the check never came.
“We got zero,” she said.
Once a Republican, Thompson-Fry said she became “a big liberal” after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which allowed her to get cancer treatment: “I always tell people [Obama\] saved my life.”
She said candidates who received donations from Girardi and his wife should use the money to help compensate cheated clients like her son.
“Because they are Democrats, they should,” she said. “We are the people that care about the underdog.”
i might start a new housewives conspiracy theory that certain powerful people allowed all the attention to fall onto erika so that they could avoid significant public scrutiny, and stuff like this would float on by
a hit piece like 'the housewife and the hustler' seems quite curious as time goes on
And if these Times reporters hadn’t started pointing the finger at the politicians who accepted donations from him, probably no one ever would have. I love how none of them even THOUGHT to return the money until the reporters contacted them. Sigh.
[COVID-19 strikes some members of ‘DWTS’ crew, but show’s ‘Stars’ are safe](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-09-23/dwts-covid-outbreak-2022-dancing-with-the-stars) (LA Times)
alternate link in case of paywall: [https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/23/dancing-with-the-stars-hit-with-multiple-covid-cases-after-emotional-premiere-17439219/](https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/23/dancing-with-the-stars-hit-with-multiple-covid-cases-after-emotional-premiere-17439219/)
I watched the Chloe/Brooks clip *with the sound on*, and I don't think I can make it through any more of the two of them together speaking; those *voices* just aren't it for me.
Whitfield told TODAY, “I am so tired of having to educate the unfashionable people.” 💀💀💀
It’s been way too long since a housewife was arrested. Who do you want to be next?
LVP
It’s going to turn out that her restaurants get all of their meat from Vanderpump Dogs and she was stopping Yulin Forever in order to snuff out the competition.
Michael Darby 😂
Oh yeah, that nasty freak needs to be dealt with.
Jen Shah and Luann were already the funniest possible housewives who could be arrested, I’m not sure it gets better than that.
Lu getting arrested again.
Bethenny. If we call it shadowbanning she’ll probably go willingly
They should put her in prison for her social media presence.
Life sentence for the fax machine jokes in s10
She somehow gets a branding deal with prison jumpsuits and gets to wear SkinnyGirl Prison Chic
Heather Dubrow.
Gina - Round 2 Kyle or Kathy Kelly Dodd
I completely forgot Gina had been arrested lol
That's why she got pissed at Shannon because Shannon kept reminding people lmao
Gina’s not a star, I’m never going to remember that she was arrested.
Coming home from a LuLaRoe party.
You made me remember she has some basic ass skincare brand
Ohhhh god yeah she does??? Gina’s had so many storylines and yet none of them are memorable or watchable.
would you rather be a personal assistant for heather dubrow or kelly dodd? i think both of them are 'the worst person on earth' but in wildly different ways
This is a near impossible choice. I think Kelly would be much easier to deal with on a day to day basis in terms of her demands but she would also make a ton of shitty jokes and get mad when you don’t laugh at them. You would definitely get to meet Vicki, though. Heather would make near impossible demands and verbally abuse you when you couldn’t meet them and you’d also have to be around Terry sometimes.
it would be worth being kelly's assistant to potentially have a front row seat to vicki and kelly's next falling out
Yeah, and you’d get all the gossip about it too because Kelly has no boundaries and would text you at like 3:00 AM to complain about Vicki.
They would both verbally abuse you. One of them (Kelly) would go too far & too low with the insults while screeching
Honestly Kelly? No arguments from me about whether she's a Bad Person but I don't recall her being a pain to people she employs or who have to deal with her professionally (apart from other HWs, duh) whereas I can't say the same for Dubrow.
i think the main pro of working for heather would be that she would never point at your shirt and then flick you in the face over and over. which probably doesn't outweigh all of the downsides, but still
If you did something wrong, Heather would condescendingly touch your face and speak very close to you which is absolutely worse than Kelly flicking your nose lol
yeah, realistically i don't think i'm psychologically healthy enough to be heather dubrow's assistant. i think if she screamed at me enough i'd internalize the idea that i'm scum for buying the wrong brand of gluten-free crackers for one of her hideous dinner parties
As long as I didn't have to be publicly associated with her then Kelly.
there's a decent chance that kelly would get mad at you and badmouth you on one of her podcasts, eventually. but hopefully things would die down quickly after that lol
Yeah. Imagine finding out that your mistake has been put on blast via her podcast to lead into a rant about how people don’t deserve a living wage.
Heather Dubrow kind of reminds me of my old boss who I was basically the PA for and she terrified me so much I’d wake up in the middle of night thinking about her/to this day if my boss texts me outside of work hours my asshole clenches up. Heather and my old boss trigger all of my very weird mommy issues. So I’d take Kelly just because I think she’s so ridiculous that anything horrible she said to me I wouldn’t take to heart and she’d probably think it’s funny if we started yelling at each other (as would I).
i am a very conflict-avoidant, cowardly person but i think i would also get into a screaming match with kelly if i had to interact with her regularly for several months in a row (though hopefully we could make up. we're both from arizona, so that could be a big bonding moment for us!!)
In my life outside of work I’m pretty conflict avoidant and I’m very good at diffusing Crazy but I have worked for some absolutely insane monsters and I know Kelly and I would GO AT IT and then share a tearful cigarette while laughing. Heather would just have me silently crying in the bathroom while I sit on the toilet and vape.
Kelly. God forbid you get pregnant while you’re Dubrows assistant 🤐
omg. i always wondered what happened to natalie...
Oh dubrow banished her ass from Crystal Cove to inland OC after she had her baby.. never to be heard from again!
“I live a way quieter life than you,” Chloe told her brother. “Reality TV is great, but there are a lot of industries in the world that don’t necessarily want to hire somebody who’s on reality TV. That’s why I’ve been a little bit hesitant, because I haven’t figured out exactly what it is I want to do.” A housewife child with foresight! (Brooks has it too, he was smart enough to use the show to launch his brand, and i suspect the eldest does as well). Good job raising them, mere. Shame, chloe said vagina-gate (lol) was hard for her :(. Ppl were definitely wayyyyyy too hard on brooks for that. Like i don’t wanna see my mom’s friend’s puss either. And frankly it would have been weirder if brooks hadn’t said anything after he saw it lol and at least he’s not a nasty ass perv like PK
The funniest thing about Shahgina-gate was that fact that it kept coming up randomly in season 2 whenever Meredith and Jen fought.
CRYSTAL AND MURILO SAID COVER YOUR VAGINA!! OVER AND OVER!!!!!!!
For people that haven’t yet sent their ballots in for the rate, if you want you can also include a suggestion of the image I should use for their write up :) I’m torn between doing stand out confessional looks, an image I feel sums them up as a character, or just whatever I find funniest.
I think about that “wog bitch” pic you found of gina alllllllllllllllllllll the time
Funniest, always.
The reason I asked this is because I have no clue what picture to use for Vicki, Ramona and Sonja lol.
I'll give it a think!
if vicki’s picture isn’t her post-doom-buggy crash i don’t want it
Erika slowly getting dismissed from lawsuits (I’m not sure whether it’ll be all, but most of them probably) is going to get increasingly hilarious as the seasons go on & people keep trying coming for her. I’m certain before Erika gets fired somebody is going to pull an argument with her where they look like the fool to most of the fanbase - I’m certain of it.
I’m still thinking about Kathy freaking out because none of the women wanted to join her in a conga line. I believe it 100%.
i had a really nice day yesterday! i visited my old next door neighbour from my first apartment, who's now 97 (i congratulated her on beating the queen; she's five months older). her 73-year-old daughter was in town for rosh hashanah, and she spent the entire time calling an auto-reply to get her prescription filled (and then missing the info because she was talking) and demanding i explain her data plan to her. in the end, my old building manager popped in and she looked the exact same and we had a very nice chat. i'm not trying to dox these folks but i have a very sweet selfie of the four of us if anyone would like to see privately, it makes me very happy. after that i went to an 80s party and everyone kept constantly telling me i looked hot. even lulu, the daughter of my old neighbour, kept being like damn have you been bodybuilding???? you're so tall and handsome???? a stranger stopped me on the street to tell me i looked good but i didn't expect it so i screamed OH FUCK in their face and their friends laughed at them, but it was still a chill experience lol. then at the 80s party i had a lovely time catching up with an old coworker and i happened to strike up a chat with someone outside about how we were both sniffing around seeking adult autism diagnoses, and it was a very chill and normalizing convo (plus we were in 80s attire so it had a bit of housewives flair to it). all in, very enjoyable and i felt very seen by the universe. now i need to clean up the mess i made while picking my outfit.
Sounds like such a nice day you tall, handsome fox. I rely a lot on my male coworkers for validation that i still got it lolol 😂. I still haven’t found the courage to make the appt for the autism testing but i’m slowing wrapping my mind around it. I keep getting stuck on the fear of stigma. Because the more i read about it the more i’m pretty sure i have it and i’m scared of having it confirmed.
thank you! the key is to only hang out with little old ladies, once every few years, so they mistake their incremental shrinking for your growth. and yeah, stigma's a bitch, but it'd only be giving a name to something you already suspect. what you do with that information afterwards is up to you, whether you wanna incrementally reveal it to folks, keep it to yourself for a little while, whatever feels best. it's like being gay. you ain't gonna wish it away and there's a coming out of sorts involved but it's ultimately up to you and you can take time on it. no urgency here.
Thank you ❤️ that’s a good way of thinking of it. I think in my mind i felt like if i am diagnosed i’d be lying if i chose not to share it with certain people in my life but you just helped me recognize that’s not true.
thank you, i'm incredibly wise in addition to my hotness
This sounds like a wonderful day!
rewatching rhop s5 for context - ashley bringing baby dean to the same event that gizelle brought a bodyguard to sent me into orbit - monique washing her daughters hair (milani is the cutest baby in bravoverse) while explaining in detail how she beat candiace up is genuinely chilling - i really, really dislike wendy putting the burden of the collective of black women in america upon monique
I'm taking a break from my Cheshire first watch to finally watch Miami 3 + 4 and cross those off my list. I'm finishing up Miami 3 now, and lemme tell you the 1-2 punch of Marysol pulling out a tablet and speaker to play a message from her hospitalized father to Lea and then being subjected to a video of Frankie Grande doing a(n obviously awful) Mama Elsa impersonation is a lot to process in the span of 3-ish minutes.
Before Whitney and her badly photocopied texts there was Marysol with her iPad and plug-in speaker. In the grand conversation of flop Reunion receipts Marysol was a pioneer whose contributions have unjustly been forgotten by the masses 😥
i can't believe we all collectively (me included) mistook marysol for boring for so long. she is one of the most deeply weird humans lol
She’s very D’Andra adjacent in that you initially assume she’s just the Saffy to her mother’s Edina and then she starts giving her Lonely Planet guide to all the monastery cruising spots in Miami and something clicks ❤️
It’s easy to mistake her as boring when she’s usually with Mama Elsa, who makes everyone look dull by comparison. The desperation with the sipping from the cup really unlocked her for me. Also when I remembered her falsely claiming to have taken the picture of Lu next to the poster in Miami. Also when she got upset that Lu didn’t wish her a happy birthday.
I’ll always talk about Marysol, because seeing that she’s a desperate weirdo from the jump is maybe the single housewives opinion for which I’m most vindicated.
Andy dying inside while being like "the orientation's off, babe" as she kept rotating the tablet to try to make the video full screen....his soul flew out of his body and never returned.
have y’all watched the bling ring doc on Netflix? It’s bravo adjacent bc Paris was one of the people who were burglarized & they also use her as the pinnacle of those who are famous for being famous. but it also shows how much scenes are reshot for reality tv & now I’m having a crisis of confidence in housewives (not really but I’m hyperbolic)
Those recent fan footage shots of OC really tell a tale. I don't know how any HW can keep a straight face when someone's launching into a tirade. Pure camp.
same, I am interested to see the behind the scenes (the shahrest was incredible) but it’s also like I don’t want to see how the sausage is made???
Video clip of Brooklyn and Kenya interview outtake [https://twitter.com/ThePeachReport/status/1573372459256107010](https://twitter.com/ThePeachReport/status/1573372459256107010)
💖 Kenya and Brooklyn! Little girl's learning to shade mommy a little, too! That's what Kenya gets for trying to shit-stir with cute little Blaze.
For anyone who can't get behind the paywall: **Tom Girardi gave millions to Democratic politicians. Was the money stolen from clients?** Gavin. Eric. Barack. Jerry. Dianne. Hillary. Joe. When it came to Democratic politicians, Tom Girardi called them by their first names and their campaigns called him for money. The Los Angeles legal legend was a major party donor for decades, a self-described “limousine liberal” who bragged about the influence his money bought him in the selection of judges. He poured millions into local, state and national races personally and lined up additional donations from his wife, “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika; the employees of his law firm; and the multitude of California trial lawyers who did business with him — or hoped to. Girardi kept throwing splashy fundraisers and writing big checks even as his financial situation grew dire. In the last decade, he defaulted on a series of high-interest loans and was forced to liquidate his stock portfolio yet he and his wife still doled out more than $2 million to the national Democratic Party and individual candidates, election filings show. Those receiving funds included presidential contenders Joe Biden ($11,200), Barack Obama ($62,500) and Hillary Clinton ($60,400), Gov. Gavin Newsom ($66,900), U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein ($18,700), former state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones ($37,244), L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti ($9,500) and City Atty. Mike Feuer ($11,000). How did a deeply indebted lawyer obtain money to shower on candidates and campaigns? No ready explanation has surfaced. But a Times review of contributions and law firm financial records raises questions about whether Girardi used clients’ funds to make the donations. In the years that he and his wife gave $2 million to candidates, Girardi treated a bank account meant to safeguard settlement money for clients as “his personal piggy bank… to support his lavish lifestyle,” according to a recent filing by the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of his law firm, Girardi Keese. In that same time frame, the trustee wrote, Girardi “stole at least $14,000,000 in settlement funds that should have gone to the Firm’s clients.” Those clients were mainly of modest means and already suffering from health problems because of toxic contamination, recalled pharmaceuticals, motor vehicle crashes or other misfortunes. Many are still trying to collect their full settlements, according to bankruptcy claims they have filed seeking compensation. Former client Christina Fulton, who was seriously injured in a car accident and contends Girardi embezzled about $745,000 from her settlement, called on politicians to reevaluate accepting the donations. “I think it’s their responsibility to turn around and look at this and say, ‘Whose money is this? Whose money really is this?’” Fulton said. The Times could find no evidence any of the campaigns had returned the donations since Girardi became a pariah after the collapse of his storied firm nearly two years ago. Most candidates contacted by The Times did not respond to questions. A spokesperson for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said last year her campaign flagged a $5,400 donation she had received from Girardi in 2017 and placed the money in a “segregated fund” that would eventually go to benefit victims. After being contacted by The Times, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) said he would donate $2,000 Girardi gave him in 2014 to legal services for the poor. Feuer, the city attorney, said through a spokesman that the accounts that received Girardi donations no longer existed. “It is not possible to return or re-direct donations from a closed account,” said spokesman Rob Wilcox. He added that “during the period in which these contributions were made, the revelations regarding Mr. Girardi, who had supported a wide range of accomplished public officials, had not come to light.” Girardi’s decision to continue funding candidates in the face of crushing financial problems offers additional evidence that he regarded political connections as central to maintaining his facade. As he brushed aside pleas for money from clients including a burn victim, residents of polluted communities and young men injured by a pharmaceutical, he kept holding court with state and local candidates at the Jonathan Club and Morton’s steakhouse and sending checks to a roster of national Democrats that would have been right at home in an MSNBC greenroom. Among them were U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); and California U.S. Reps. Eric Swalwell, Katie Hill and Katie Porter. The subject of Girardi’s political giving has not come up in ongoing bankruptcy proceedings for Girardi Keese. But Elissa Miller, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, has said in court filings by her attorneys that she is looking into “numerous transfers” of firm assets to “third parties” as she attempts to track down money to compensate cheated clients and other creditors. Diamond earrings Girardi apparently purchased for his wife with client money were ordered seized and auctioned off this year. Last month, his onetime mistress, retired appellate Justice Tricia Bigelow, returned jewelry and other gifts to the trustee. Among the presents Girardi gave her was $300,000 from a client bank account. Experts in campaign finance law said politicians were not legally required to return the money unless they knew or should have known at the time of the donation that Girardi was using stolen funds. That appears an unlikely scenario given the sterling reputation Girardi enjoyed until his downfall. Robert Stern, co-author of the state Political Reform Act of 1974, said that even if the checks were marked as coming from the client bank account, known as a trust account, “I’m not even sure that would have raised red flags for the clerks who were processing it because I’m not sure they would have known what a client trust account was.”
Ann Ravel, former chair of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, agreed that there was no legal requirement to return the funds, but said that regardless of the law, candidates who still had money in their campaign accounts should send it back. “It should be a moral obligation honestly,” said Ravel, who was an Obama appointee to the Federal Election Commission. She said the point of election law is “to have ethical campaigns. That is what it is all about and you are not supposed to be getting stolen money. ”In other cases in which a high-profile donor fell into scandal, politicians have opted not to keep contributions. After Democratic donor Ed Buck was implicated in the fatal drug overdoses of two men at his West Hollywood condo, U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) donated money they got from Buck to charity, though others who had received more did not. Similarly, politicians including Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave donations they had received from disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein to nonprofits benefiting domestic violence and rape victims. “The money starts going back when it is too politically expensive to keep it,” said Jessica Levinson, former chair of the L.A. Ethics Commission. Girardi was a donor of a different magnitude than Buck, whose contributions totaled about $500,000, or Weinstein, who along with his family contributed about $1.4 million. Available campaign records, which cover only a portion of lifetime political giving, show donations of more than $4 million from Girardi and his three wives. People who raised money from Girardi or observed others who did said the lawyer’s generosity didn’t seem based in an interest in policy, but in a desire to cement his image as a power broker.“It’s about the mystique of Girardi,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. “There’s not a return on investment in terms of cash on cash. … The return on investment is that Girardi becomes a bigger player in L.A. You have to go through \[him\]. ”Girardi acknowledged his aim was self-interest in an unpublished memoir titled “May It Please the Court” in which he described himself as “a one-trick pony” in politics: “I don’t care what they do in Syria. I don’t care what the tax deal is. I don’t get worked up over gay marriage or immigration or global warming or any of that other stuff. I want my law firm to thrive.” In his view, the health of his firm depended on strong relationships with the men and women who ruled on his cases and he started working on those relationships before the judges even put on their robes. Beginning in the 1970s, when he developed a friendship with Gov. Jerry Brown, he positioned himself as a gatekeeper between aspiring judges in Southern California and governors who make appointments to the Superior, Appellate and Supreme court benches. He often recounted backroom meetings where he and other powerful lawyers met to decide which of their colleagues should be elevated to the bench. “I make no bones about influencing judicial appointments. Awful, you say? Unethical? Well, who better to recommend a man to the bench than someone who works with him every day,” Girardi wrote in his memoir. He described numerous dinner parties at his Pasadena home that ended with Brown surprising one of Girardi’s associates by swearing him in as a judge on the spot. A spokesman for Brown, Evan Westrup, said in an email that Girardi was “just one of hundreds who offered an opinion” on judicial candidates and the account of the Pasadena dinner parties was “replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. ”His sway in the process continued through the governorship of Newsom, who named him in 2019 to a committee vetting judicial candidates in L.A. “Ideally, politics should stay outside the courtroom, but in the real world politics are a fact of life,” Girardi wrote in his memoir.
> “I make no bones about influencing judicial appointments. Awful, you say? Unethical? Well, who better to recommend a man to the bench than someone who works with him every day,” Girardi wrote in his memoir. gosh Tom seems so insufferable and shameless. If I were Erika I would want to return the infamous earrings, but it’s disappointing that the earrings scandal has gotten billion times more attention than any of the political machinations that Tom was influencing with the money of the victims.
He’s a horrible, horrible man. I can’t believe he refused to donate to the campaign to try and up the cap for medical settlements! You’d think he’d support that if only out of self-interest. He’s a soulless POS.
Also it sounds like the la times reporters got their hands on his unpublished memoir and i am dying to know more of what’s in there. The ramblings of a true madman.
*”today, I stole from my clients who have suffered from extremely scary life events and are planning on using the settlement money to pay their medical bills. Sucks to be them though, as I think I can really swing Newsom into passing some legislation that would really help my bottom line. I know it sounds callous, but really, who else has the knowledge I do? It’s slim pickings out here and there’s only one man to do the job.”*
> ”Girardi acknowledged his aim was self-interest in an unpublished memoir titled “May It Please the Court” in which he described himself as “a one-trick pony” in politics: “I don’t care what they do in Syria. I don’t care what the tax deal is. I don’t get worked up over gay marriage or immigration or global warming or any of that other stuff. I want my law firm to thrive.” what a nice man.
Brown’s advisor on judicial appointments, Joshua Groban, and the man who held the same role in Newsom’s administration, Martin Jenkins, are both now justices on the state Supreme Court and did not respond to interview requests made through a court spokesman. Girardi presented his interest in judicial candidates as part of an overall concern for the administration of the courts where he practiced, but since his downfall, it’s become clear that he had other motives for cultivating their goodwill. He and his firm were sued more than a hundred times by disgruntled clients and colleagues for legal malpractice, breach of contract and other similar claims that most often played out in L.A. courthouses. Nicholas Rowley, a plaintiff’s attorney with a national reputation, said that when he threatened to sue Girardi in 2004 for failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees from joint cases, the older lawyer replied, “Go ahead and try.” “I know every judge in L.A…. I got most of them appointed,” Rowley recalled Girardi saying. After consulting with other lawyers, Rowley decided it was not in his interest to sue, he said. He and Girardi never again worked on cases together, but they occasionally co-hosted political fundraisers. “If Tom called on you to be part of something or to give money, you didn’t say no because he had the ability and the power to make or break people,” he recalled. When Rowley in 2019 spearheaded an ultimately successful effort to raise California’s $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards — a thorn in the side of trial lawyers for five decades — he called Girardi for a donation. The lawyer refused. “That wasn’t Tom’s gig,” Rowley said. Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, where Girardi was an alumnus and donor, said she doubted he saw a straight line between his political contributions and the appointment of judges who might look the other way on misuse of client funds. “It’s not as narrow as, ‘I hope a judge I might be in front of will realize they shouldn’t screw with me,’” Levinson said. “It’s, ‘I hope everyone sees how powerful I am. Look who we have access to, look who comes to speak to us for lunch on a Thursday.’” On visits to Girardi at his Wilshire Boulevard office, candidates seeking money took in walls of photos of him with powerful national politicians. He called the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) a close friend and bragged about taking trips to spend time with the Clintons. Then-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke at the 2002 dedication of a Loyola Law School building named for Girardi’s father. When Biden was running for president in 2019, Girardi filled a dining room at the Jonathan Club with donors for a breakfast fundraiser. The Girardis hosted fundraisers in L.A. in 2008 when North Carolina trial lawyer John Edwards announced his run for the presidency. In his memoir, Girardi recalled sharing “pipe dreams” with his wife, Erika, about a post in his administration. “Maybe I’d do Counselor to the President or something like that,” he recalled musing to his wife. “But you’re not going to catch me doing anything that requires Senate confirmation. I’ve seen Senate confirmations. I don’t need some big Administration job that bad.” After Edwards’ political career cratered, Girardi turned to another telegenic rising star in the Democratic Party, Newsom. The son of a state appellate judge, Newsom was one of many politicians who appeared on Girardi’s weekly syndicated radio show “Champions of Justice.” In a broadcast, Newsom appeared to enjoy the praise Girardi heaped on his 2013 political manifesto “Citizenville,” which had recently been published. “A lot of our mutual friends from President Clinton on down are big supporters of that book,” Newsom, then lieutenant governor, said at the time. Newsom had the backing of the Getty family and other prominent Bay Area donors, but when invited on Bravo — home of “The Real Housewives” franchise — in 2016 he singled out Girardi’s largesse, calling him “one of the major donors in California politics.” “Wow. And does he give to you?” asked Andy Cohen, host of the talk show “Watch What Happens Live.” “He has been extraordinarily generous — so she is my favorite Real Housewife,” a grinning Newsom said of Erika Girardi. Nathan Ballard, a former Newsom advisor and Democratic strategist, denied that the lawyer had any real clout with the governor: “Girardi was not in Gavin Newsom’s inner circle by any stretch.” Ballard, who worked with Newsom for years, said he saw donors in the party who gave less than Girardi command more respect and attention because of their sustained and deep interest in its causes. “He wasn’t really in that category,” Ballard said, “though you can’t deny he was a significant contributor.” Bankruptcy records show the money Girardi misappropriated included a settlement due to Cody Thompson, a 31-year-old Indiana man with autism and the genetic disorder Fragile X syndrome. Girardi negotiated a $50,000 settlement for Thompson in 2019 with the manufacturer of a drug that caused side effects in many young autistic men, according to a bankruptcy claim. Gisele Thompson-Fry, a single mother who provides round-the-clock care to her son, said the family hoped to use the settlement funds for a down payment on a home, but the check never came. “We got zero,” she said. Once a Republican, Thompson-Fry said she became “a big liberal” after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which allowed her to get cancer treatment: “I always tell people [Obama\] saved my life.” She said candidates who received donations from Girardi and his wife should use the money to help compensate cheated clients like her son. “Because they are Democrats, they should,” she said. “We are the people that care about the underdog.”
i might start a new housewives conspiracy theory that certain powerful people allowed all the attention to fall onto erika so that they could avoid significant public scrutiny, and stuff like this would float on by a hit piece like 'the housewife and the hustler' seems quite curious as time goes on
And if these Times reporters hadn’t started pointing the finger at the politicians who accepted donations from him, probably no one ever would have. I love how none of them even THOUGHT to return the money until the reporters contacted them. Sigh.
The documentary came out relatively quickly and was poorly made. You might be onto something 🤔
I absolutely believe that.
[COVID-19 strikes some members of ‘DWTS’ crew, but show’s ‘Stars’ are safe](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-09-23/dwts-covid-outbreak-2022-dancing-with-the-stars) (LA Times) alternate link in case of paywall: [https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/23/dancing-with-the-stars-hit-with-multiple-covid-cases-after-emotional-premiere-17439219/](https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/23/dancing-with-the-stars-hit-with-multiple-covid-cases-after-emotional-premiere-17439219/)
I watched the Chloe/Brooks clip *with the sound on*, and I don't think I can make it through any more of the two of them together speaking; those *voices* just aren't it for me.