…is a Television show I stumbled across on the Style Channel. It’s actually all about a troupe of faux-blond, overly mascara-ed Texas women who live high on the hog so to speak. I’ve only seen one or two episodes, but based on my limited observation, the program seems to be patterned after The Real Housewives of New York City, only bigger and brassier. That’s just the way Texas is.

I’m probably deranged, but I like to watch these shows. I think it all started with Bravo Network’s the Real Housewives of Orange County followed in no particular order by the Real Housewives of New York City and then the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Somewhere along the line, the Real Housewives of Atlanta crept in.

They all run to a pattern, big rich beautiful (depending on your tastes) generally blond women who seem to be in a dither over something. I’ve never quite figured out why they are constantly in some kind of verbal brouhaha. In fact, I don’t even know what their arguments are all about.

Occasionally, they’ll have a party and we get a chance to see their husbands, boyfriends, or significant others. These men are all dressed alike, usually in jeans and a white dress shirt untucked and unbuttoned to a point just above the navel.

The men are usually freshly shaven and neatly trimen around the ears. They stand quietly drink in hand near their women and do their utmost to exude confidence, the kind that requires years of bar fights and other forms of male acculturation to achieve.

Sometimes they look at one another quizzically as if to ask, “Why are these women arguing? Why don’t they just draw and shoot like us Texas  manly guys?”

As you might expect based on the show’s title, signs and symbols of conspicuous consumption are all around: upscale shopping, tennis lessons, golf courses, gated communities, cocktail parties, gatherings at intimate lounges, all of the things that make the rest of us wonder why they whine and whine and whine and snivel when a misguided politician wants to raise taxes on the rich.

But are these people really rich? Or do they live from paycheck to paycheck? Have the show’s creators and producers managed to locate a bunch of poor but good looking Texas women from the swamps of Southeast Texas and trained them in the arts of pretense, which probably isn’t too difficult given the American tendency to embellish our lives.

I don’t know about the Texas beauties but a couple of Orange County wives have been reduced to finding work after a divorce. One of them even moved out of her upscale digs into a more modest residence. But that’s America in the 21^st Century. You just can’t trust the politicians to pressure their corporate buddies into bringing a few jobs back to the good old U.S. of A.

I think I’ve listed all of the Housewives of…Genre. If I’ve missed one or more, let me know. And if you have some ideas for similar shows, let me know about them as well. I have my own ideas. For example, I’d dearly love one about the Housemaids of the Terminator.

That’s my take on life in the idle lane. You may or may not like these kinds of reality shows. To me, they are examples of shows I can’t not watch.

Addendum: You may have noted a sentence above that I repeat here in which two adjectives may seem discordant: “The men are usually freshly shaven and neatly trimen…”  Ordinarily, I would write “shaved and trimmed,” but I decided to slip in an Olde English construction to demonstrate the infinite possibilities for expression in the English language. Another example, “Get your friggin hands offa me you uncouth vermin,” is a form of expression descended from Frisian. Or, “Fuck you, Jack,” a greeting widely used among members of the U.S. Congress, a manner of speaking which is also known to be a regular utterance of Vice Presidents. English is a very adaptable language.

Addendum to Addendum. I still don't know why I write silly stuff like this. Maybe I'm just trying to keep my mind active and away from my wife's death.  That's not a pity ploy. It's just an attemp to pack this post with a few more words to make it seem I'm a native speaker and writer of the English language. And to some extend, of gobbledegook, a form of burreaucratic communcation marked by an in ability to STFU.