Real World SD 2

what can you say? did you SEE THAT? i am
determinded not to write about the Real World every
week, but the San Diego kids are making it tough not
to. they're just laying out so much, so fast that
it's impossible to process it all. let's see, in 2
episodes totaling 60 minutes, they have accomplished
so much - racial, freakish, extrodinary sluttiness, a
solid 40-percent of on-camera time visibly drunk.
we'll start at the top:
So they shattered the Racial Fight Over/Under by
attacking it in Episode 2, as 'Ja' (black guy) and
Robin (Tampa bartender with the tits) went at it. But
in keeping with a trend for this crew, they didn't
ease their way in or out of the fight and nobody took
thepassive-aggresive route. no, this is the meanest,
rawest cast ever assembled, and if there was any doubt
about that they blew it away when Ol' girl got
hammered and flat-out dropped the N-bomb outside a
bar.
funniest part? HOW TO CHOOSE?!?!?!? the
I'll-Never-Sin-Again-If-I-Live-Through-This look on
the roommate's faces? Robin's finger-in-the-face
pointing thing and Ja's inability to deal with it?
Bill - Mellow Guy, and now, Mesmerized By The Tits-Guy
- walking-hand-in-hand with Robin moments later,
waxing about how he knows her well enough to know
she'd never hurt anyone - one of the most in-denial
moments since Steven thought he was going to get Bryn
run off the show for throwing a fork? Or just Robin's
shirt, a possible Top Ten Nominee for sluttiest
garment in show history?
I mean - WHAT A MOMENT!!!
And yet... the moment had just begun.
Because rather than collapse into apology and storm
off humiliated, she rides home with the other 5
roomies (Ja took a cab), and works on her story the
whole way home. and as the roomies relentlessly
impress on her on indefensible her position is, she
retreats deeper and deeper and deeper into the "nobody
knows my background" and "I dated black guys"
defenses.
So Ja gets home, close to burning the house down,
and who does he call? His mom.
Now the universal rule for Real World phone calls
is this: they make things worse. Always. because
the person on the other end - friend, family, teacher,
gf or bf - is basicly jealous of their set-up and
wants to wreck it, so they encourage the cast member
to stand their ground and fight. And they do. And
you end up with pretty much the whole Chicago season.
So what's Ja's mom do? it went like this:
"She called a guy a N-word."
"was he black?"
"yeah"
"was she black?"
"No, mamma, she's a white girl."
And you think - it's over. somebody is out of the
house this week.

and then it happened: Momma talks him down. she
delivers a tolerance-of-thier-ignorance speech that
you can hang in the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
next to the burned Freedom Rider bus.
I couldn't believe it. Truth, Humanity and Love
shoulders past Lust and Liquer - first time ever! mom
literally saved the show.

so Ja, urged on by the terrified sobs of Cameran,
southern girl, goes downstairs to put the fire out
with Robin. And you think, 'oh, man, i can't believe
it but it looks like everything is gonna be OK. Ja
will just land the whole thing in that cave on that
asteroid and....'

the roommates have a big meeting and Ja is calmly
telling Robin and the whole group that no mtter what,
Robin can't know what he's been through and Robin
screams:

"Have you ever been raped by a white person?!"

get us out of here, chewy. This is no asteroid.

watching with me, Mandy, within a minute decided that
she was flat-out lying. that she'd had 2 or 3 or 4
hours to sit there and think "what the HELL am I gonna
say to get out THIS?" and decided the only thing that
trumps the race card is the rape card.
I am willing to believe she embellished the details
of a Big Mistake Boyfriend, but sure enough, in a
confessional tape, she backpeddles like a Michigan
cornerback, saying she'd had a "bad relationship" with
a person of a "different background" and comes very
close to saying it was 'no big deal'. she CERTAINLY
never says 'rape' again.
But with ja in front of her, she Victims-up like a
champ.
And it works, at least for now, cuz everybody goes
to bed.

and 20 minutes after the last time i did it, i
exhaled. unreal.

so that episode peters out with Bill and Robin playing
basketball and talking cute and i guess that's all
further evidence that nobody with tits like those
could hurt anybody.

so I chilled, to the next episode.

i'd say this one was much more light-hearted, but how
could it not be?
No, in this one, the kids get their Job - they are
going to be sailing instructors or something for the
yacht company tht runs the America's Cup boat Stars
and Stripes.
only, there's a lil' ol hiccup.
Frankie (freak girl) has a Freak eruption to rival
her Cystic Fibrosis confession: she is mortally,
psychotically, panic-attack-inducing afraid of Big
Boats. Define Big: let's say Jay-z's Big Pimpin'
Yacht and up. She LITERALLY cannot look at a Big
Boat. She is standing in the kitchen of the hosue,
and across the Bay, probably a mile away, a Cruiseship
(Carnival or something) goes by and she runs from the
room, gasping for air, and starts splashing water on
her face.
Can't do it - cannot even SEE a big boat without
totally losing it. Mandy challenged me to find out,
in medical terms, what kind of phobia that is, but i'm
not even gonna try. it's the Real World, and that's
enough for me.
And her job is now to sail around San diego, the
west coast's #1 cruiseship port and the world's second
largest Navy base.
gonna be GREAT summer.
Also, Jeannie, the Asian roommate so neglected and
ignored in the first 2 episodes that i didn't realize
she was part of the show, has her own racial moment,
but this one is pretty lighthearted as well.
she complains of being shunned by the 4 popular
housemamtes, and forced to hang out with the 2
unpopular ones - whch make the clique 4 against 3,
which seems pretty good to me, but what do I know?
No, the good part is where she complains that
growing up she felt isolated because of her race (both
parents non-english speaking Korean) as she grew up -
in San Francisco.
I don't know Jeannie or her parents or where,
exactly, she grew up. But if there's one city in
america where being asian at least buys you some
safety in numbers, its san francisco.

also by the end of 3, Bill and Robin were sleeping
together. duh.

and i'll leave you with this, the tear-streaked
confession-and-repentence of Cameran during the Ja
Event: "I will tell you that I have told black jokes,
and i have used the N-word, because I didn't know, and
I sit here and listen to all these things you're
saying and they're so beautiful."

prediction for next major event: Bill, Mellow Guy,
goes nuts on somebody. but who cares. just so long
as they don't hide the booze.