Sister Wives Season Finale: or, how to kill a useless day

Forgive me, please - oh God, forgive me, for I have a nasty filthy habit and I enjoy the hell out of it. I'm powerless over it and it is just such hell, I'm about to join SWA (Sister Wives Anonymous).

I'm powerless over the Fundamentalist Mormon Brown family, who reside not in polygamist-friendly Utah but in Las Vegas. (Long story.) I'm shamefaced over the whole dang crew of them: Merry, Sheri, Dairy and Marvelle-Ann (or something). 

Sister Husband Kody Brown, who has no visible means of support except a fat salary from TLC, is the four-way hub of this mad domestic mess, dashing not from bedroom to bedroom but from house to house - meaning, the four brand-new custom-built homes the Browns purchased in their very own cul-de-sac after running away from Utah for some imaginary crime.

No one has any money in this family, but, sensing the impending meltdown of the entire system, they decide to plan an elaborate Commitment Ceremony (or four-way remarriage bash) costing, probably, at least $10,000.00.

Some 200 people are coming to this affair, if I may use that expression, so the Browns must know an awful lot of other polygs, some obviously from out of state. But this whole Walmart-catered affair, this stacking-green-plastic-chairs-and-rolls-of-white-paper-on-top-of-folding-tables-borrowed-from-the-local-high-school-gym deal, seemed salted with extras, people who would sit there, eat,and look interested while the Browns nervously read out an interminable Mission Statement which ran on much longer than the Ten Commandments. (I mean the movie version.)

But let's back up a little. All we really cared about, after all, was the four wives' dresses. And it's true, I really did have an interest in watching the process of these gowns being individually designed and created for them.

Oops.

For some reason, they picked about the worst person they could find, a young woman freshly graduated from"design school" who had obviously never made a dress in her life. Then they gave her three weeks to design and make four original, formal-quality gowns in three radically different sizes and styles. There were interminable shots of this young woman pinning, and pinning, and pinning the lopsided, saggy, inside-out, fraying, mismatched pieces of fabric on the wives. None of it looked good, and the general atmosphere was one of sweating alarm as the completely-inexperienced designer tugged and swore. Bringing her mother in at the last minute to keep the ship from sinking altogether did not help.

The whole dress story sort of collapsed, and I was actually shocked that it turned out so badly. Two of the four dresses had to be scrapped entirely ("This isn't working. Do you have something in your closet?"). The other two were unfortunate, like bad costumes from a high school musical, but were launched anyway so the enterprise wouldn't be a total flop.

Robyn, the skinniest and most Kody-worthy of the four (see photo above: now why didn't she wear THAT little red number to the ceremony, seeing as how it made Kody's eyes pop out?) picked a nice little funeral dress out of her closet, and Meri, who doesn't have the sense of a goat, went out on a mad spree and found something for $59.00 that LOOKED like it cost $ 59.00, so tight on her that her substantial abdomen and even her belly button pushed through the sheer fabric.

Well, at least the apple green color was good.

Christine, sometimes known as The One I Like, showed up in a sort of burnt-orange medieval maternity bathrobe, with huge pleated billows of fabric blowing back behind her. The tacky gold ribbons here and there did not contribute to the look. My only question is: where do you buy orange crimplene nowadays? Must be vintage, from Craigslist or some-such. Janelle, who currently seems to have the most fans on the show (it varies from season to season, if not week to week) would have looked nice if the amateur seamstress had  known how to sew. There were four or five bustlines at the front of this thing, meandering switchbacks of poorly-sewn, puckered seams that finally bunched up somewhere above her bust, making her look older and actually disguising her recent, impressive weight loss.

(l. to r.: Christine's unfortunate burnt-orange Camelot castoff; Meri's one-size-doesn't-fit-all, sale-rack special; Janelle's almost-but-not-quite royal blue dress, complete with three breasts and innumerable puckered seams;  Robyn's little black Mormon interment ceremony number. Perhaps because they see their husband only once every four nights, these gals know how to make do.)

The Browns really try - they try and try - but they just never get it right. I don't know what it is. Idiocy? Or is it the pressure of living in a fishbowl, of having cameras zoom in on life's every little crisis? No one even thinks of this. To most people, "having my own reality TV show" is the pinnacle of success and happiness. Everything will be wonderful from now on.

But we are beginning to see what happens when the seeds of narcissism, which I believe are present in every one of us, are watered weekly by reality TV's relentless drool. Les Fleurs de Mal begin to sprout, and eventually they take over.

But soft! What's this I see on the horizon? For reasons that no one is willing to explain, TLC is launchng an ALL NEW polygamy show called My Five Wives, trumping Kody's harem by a whole wife.

There have been whispers on Sister Wives lately about Kody "branching out", something he naturally feels entitled to, with or without his wives' approval. The rumor was seeded and watered when a "fortune teller" came on the show (like a Fundamendalist Mormon would go for that!) and predicted Kody would take a new wife, while everyone acted stunned. Now we see why. The pressure is on: competitive wife-collecting! We can't have FIVE wives on one show, and only FOUR wives on the other, can we? 

(These gals are so committed that they actually rehearse between events: note that one of them is away, presumably getting it on with Kody "Big Polyg" Brown.)

Is TLC phasing out the Browns at last? Am I right in suspecting this new show will be edgier and sexier, with younger, svelter wives and a husband who is not a complete boob?

More will be revealed.

Kody practices his second-favorite sport.

Dear sir or madam, will you read my book

It took me years to write, will you take a look

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The Sister Wives exodus: a very costly publicity stunt

An obsession's an obsession, am I right? Remember the Dead Munchkin Hypothesis that lasted, I think, five posts? I promise this one won't run as long (though it keeps coming back for more).


I stumbled upon an article that opened my eyes, wide, about the reality show Sister Wives: you know, the one I keep blathering on about. Their much-publicized flight from Utah to avoid criminal prosecution for their "lifestyle" turns out to be more hype than reality.

I don't know what came first: their exodus from Eden to the Promised Land, or this report which claims they were never really under threat of prosecution in the first place.


"In new legal papers in their court case, the Browns are requesting that the law they’re being prosecuted under be dismissed. That probably won’t happen, but they probably won’t get prosecuted at all either. The prosecutors have mentioned that they are trying to get the case dismissed, since all of the wives have entered into it by their own free will and there isn’t any incest, underage marriage or tax or welfare fraud. So Kody uprooted everyone, took his kids out of their school, giving them three days notice (and telling them not to tell their friends goodbye), and hightailed it to Vegas, all based on his own paranoia. He could have just stayed put and ridden it out. At least he created a great new plot line for his reality show, right?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But is Kody Brown man enough to admit he made a huge, damaging mistake? What would happen if the family decided to return to  their megahouse in Utah? Nothing, probably, by the looks of it. But pride has a way of keeping people nailed in place.

At this point, it looks like nobody's happy with the move. The teenagers are so bitter and angry that I wonder if one of them isn't going to just plain bolt. You can't casually uproot a kid from this kind of exotic background: he won't find new friends readily, if at all. If the stigma of polygamy doesn't get him, the stigma of having a jackass father who flaunts his screwups on national TV will.

Like some bizarre latter-day (!) Brigham Young trailing a host of obedient wives and children, Kody has made all the decisions here, though as usual the wives pretend to be independent agents. The family seems to be on the verge of cracking apart. Polygamy for the most part must happen under glass: it's a bizarre way of life that makes most people profoundly uneasy. Outside the protective bubble, the spotlight can be pretty glaring.

Divorce won't happen, marital breakdown won't happen, but mental health breakdown is already taking place, and will only escalate. For all his patriarchal posturing, Kody Brown is about fifteen years old emotionally. He acts impulsively, not thinking how his dashing off to "my Plymouth Rock" (his grotesque name for Las Vegas) will affect the large circle of women and children whose security depends on him. Narcissism has a steep cost: but never to the narcissist, who inevitably hands off the damage to the vulnerable souls in his orbit.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Sister Wives: THE MUSICAL!

While you're waiting for the full ramifications of an all-singing, all-dancing LDS musical in pastel polyester and cowboy hats, let me fill you in on a little bit of background.

I don't know much about Mormonism except that it's based on the visions and writings of Brigham Young, the ultimate religious patriarch who advocated that love should be "multiplied, not divided". (Oops, that was someone else.) Quite a few years ago now, my husband and I went to Utah to see Bryce Canyon and other heartstoppingly beautiful natural phenomena. While in Salt Lake City, we decided to take in the sights.

It was interesting. When we visited the Great Salt Lake, it was almost like looking at a sheet of silver, inert and devoid of all life. But wait! What were those million-legged little things squirming around in the water? There seemed to be thousands of them.

A local happened to be passing by. "What?" he answered in the jovial manner of most of the Utah-ians we met. "Them's sea monkeys."

Our next little frisson of pleasure came when we took a guided bus tour of the city. It wasn't so much the sights as the narration, which was both informed and hilarious. There were two guides: the driver, who'd been doing this for a lot of years, and a young Mormon student doing part of the required missionary work to become a, well, you know, a real Mormon-Morman-type guy.

The driver asked about our hotel room. "Oh, it's great," we said. "How about the beds?" "The. . . beds?" Then we remembered that our room had not one, but two king-sized beds in it. "This is an LDS secret, but those are for the extra wives," he said.

That was nothing compared to what the student said. We drove along a massively wide street, supposedly built to accommodate throngs of wagons as they steamed along their way to the Promised Land.

"See, there's where Brigham Young used to go for a walk with all his wives," he said.

Badda-boom! Holy roller, it was (unexpectedly) funny!

The surprises never ended. We went to the Mormon Museum, an interesting place that was a rich slice of Utah history. That is. . . until I noticed something.

There was no mention at all of a certain practice, now banned to be sure, but so much a part of Mormon history that leaving it out would be like the history of Canada without maple syrup (or coureurs de bois, or Charlie Farquharson).

There was no mention at all of polygamy.

Really. I turned the place upside down and inside out. It just wasn't there. Not even one of those creep-out photos of a patriarch with dozens of wives and children posed like a school photo ("short people in front, please"). Nada.

Fast-forward to the age of "reality" (read: "unreality") TV, a time when polygamy is not only practiced but shoved in our faces. I have unfortunately become hooked on the misadventures of the Brown family (Kody, Brody, Dody, The One I Like, and You-know-that-fat-one). 

Something funny happened here: for whatever reason, probably financial, they decided to make their private lives public in a megahouse in Utah. Even the bedroom door was open, though they always seemed to feature a wife (interchangeable) dressed in flannel pajamas and a thick bathrobe giving her husband a palsy-walsy, sexless hug.

This show is so weird! The family seemed astonished when the shit hit the fan after (or probably long before) the show premiered. They kept talking about how important it was to "come out" and show the public how they lived, in order to promote, I guess, religious tolerance or something. The deeply-entrenched patriarchal values system that kept the wives nailed in place while claiming independence was presented with a slick veneer of modernity and even hipness. Hey, folks, we're just like everybody else, except that the Daddy boffs a whole lot of Mommies!

So the Utah police, or authorities, or whoever, got on the case and began to persecute them, which was a ratings grab for sure, so they had to "flee" (claiming to be "run out of Dodge" by Kody the faux-cowboy) to the Promised Land: Las Vegas.

Yeah, THAT Las Vegas.

I kept saying, "noooooooooooooooooooooo" as they crammed things haphazardly into their truck, which kept breaking down. Don't do this to the family! Why not stay and face the music? You can flee and claim persecution and try to get public sympathy, or you can stay and take responsibility, in full realization that the reality-viewing public would NEVER allow the law to "split up the family" and make Kody go to jail for his sexual peccadillos (which is, by the way, a sort of Mormon armadillo).

But they ran, and now everything's in a mess. "Split up the family"? Instead of one massive house (with Robyn on the side, her separate kennel a few doors down: I guess Kody needed an airing every four nights), they have FOUR big houses, two with swimming pools, and no discernible source of income. Except maybe reality TV.

I think it's Janelle who had to give up her career doing "???" and has groused about it non-stop ever since, saying she's "used to being busy" and now doesn't know who she is. For some reason she has never done anything in the areas of child care or cooking or household chores. She's just sitting there. She could be peeling potatoes, but no. She "can't find work", and her identity is shattered. But think of the massive amount of work required every day to keep everyone clean, clothed and fed. Why doesn't she just pick one of the four houses at random and roll up her sleeves? But for some reason she's in a sort of special position, maybe because she just doesn't like to clean toilets. This I will never understand. Or is she, after all, Kody's favorite? Did we all think it was Robyn with her flat stomach and hormones and tears? Pshaw. Maybe Kody likes to jump up and down on Janelle's. . . bed.

(Note in the photo below, how Janelle, far left, is almost completely hidden. Fat is stigmatized; polygamy isn't? As a matter of fact, even her head looks smaller than the rest: I think her entire body has been shrunk down, then relegated to the corner.)

Robyn, well. . . most of the ink spilled lately has been about Robyn, Kody's demure new wife, she who cries at the drop of a hat, has a cuter and slimmer figure than any of them, and is now (surprise!) pregnant. The blown fuse of the other three's expired fertility seemed to give Kody license to look for a fourth table leg so he could continue to dine on a richly-varied sexual diet.

This show is so weird about sex. Though in a way, the show is about sex, or at least patriarchal sexual arrangements that most people would find distasteful, everyone kind of pretends it isn't happening. Kody admonishes the fifteen or so teenagers in the family that they can't be "sexual" until they graduate from high school, or turn thirty, whichever comes first. Telling a teenager not to be "sexual" is like telling them not to blink their eyes. It's practically a recipe for shame as they try to cope (alone) with bodies that don't always co-operate. This is not to mention yet another of the dozens of contradictions in the household: they can't be "sexual", when Kody can roll around with four different chicks, of his own choosing of course, and get them pregnant into the bargain.

This past episode featured the Brown family, now trying to maintain four large houses in Las Vegas on no income, going on a furniture-buying binge. For a fundamentalist family who supposedly lives for their faith, this clan is awfully materialistic (and hardly ever mentions God or prayer or anything spiritual, except for having their kids join a Presbyterian youth group "as a social outlet").

TV has become something of a freak show, with two-foot-tall doctors delivering babies not much bigger than they are, people cramming their houses up to the ceiling with foul garbage, and (even) so-called mediums with grating voices telling gullible clients, "Oh yes, I see him standing right there in front of you!" while their eyes brim over with gratitude and hopeless hope.

Network TV isn't much better, with shows like Pan Am and The Playboy Club trying unsuccessfully to coat-tail on Mad Men's phenomenally original influence. (And by the way, why in HELL'S name do we have to wait until February to see Season 5 of Mad Men? Whose brilliantly shitty idea was that? Don't they realize how much momentum they will lose by then? The show is committing suicide, but only because its creator Matthew Weiner is having a prima donna hissy-fit over commercial time.)

So. . . the one truly watchable show is being withheld, with perhaps fatal results. I will admit that my habit of watching Hoarders and Sister Wives and junk like that is about as healthy and justifiable as eating massive amounts of movie popcorn saturated with salt and "golden topping".

But when SW runs out of steam, which it might when the last wife finally passes through menopause and the seventh house explodes, there's always Sister Wives: The Musical!, featuring those merry wives of Kody doing high-kicks and pole-dancing in a joyous celebration of how love should be "multiplied, not divided".

Until the law arrives, and subtracts them all.

Four's company

Unless y'all've been buried under a tree lately, you'll know all about this new "reality" show on TLC called - what the hell's it called? Oh yeah, Sister Wives. Might as well call it Bob and Carol and Alice and Alice.

See, polygamy is fun now. It's cool. It's an alternative lifestyle, like composting and recycling and community gardening. Except that it's even more rewarding (or so certain people insist).

We have this guy named Kody Brown (not his real name - heh-heh) who lives in Utah, natch, and long ago married three rather large long-haired blondes (not that he has a "type"). They insist they all married this guy before any of their children were born, but then, hey presto, thirteen of them popped out (or should I say twelve and a half - one is still in the oven). This is not so much a family as a litter, a la the Duggars, the Gosselins, and that other family, the one that popped out the quints.

What's this fascination with raising such a mess of kids, anyway? Why is it being presented as such a barrel o' fun? It must be a modern-day version of the carnival side show. And what do you know - one of them really IS called Chrissie (well, Christine), though she's a little too stout to pass for that airhead on Three's Company.

We don't use the term "bigamy" any more - it's one of those words you have to blow the dust off of. Like polygamy, it's illegal as hell in Utah, as it is everywhere else. And the Mormon church is dead-set against it. Does it ever occur to this Kody guy (and who spells it with a K?) that he's not only living in sin, but living under the constant threat of arrest? Is breaking the law really the best example to his mass of kids?

But Kody has all that covered. In interviews, he literally says things like "shucks" and "dang it", insisting with sociopathic sincerity that he's merely obeying the laws of his religion. Having three kinds of nooky to choose from is faith-based, I guess, though I find that hard to comprehend.

Never mind: these wives all smile, smile, smile, and insist that their way of living is a free choice. Incredibly, they say it's up to their kids to decide what sort of life they will lead, but this flies in the face of the entrenched fundamentalism and profound, ruthless patriarchy of "plural marriage".

But there's a "surprise" here. Not content with all that vanilla, Kody wants a little chocolate in his life (or in the bedroom - though he complains of not having any "space" of his own, poor baby. I guess his only space is in these women's vaginas.) The impending addition of a fourth wife to the harem, a slim young brunette this time, seems stage-managed, almost a stunt for the cameras: or is that why the producers agreed to make this show in the first place? Is this impending shift of family dynamics going to make for good TV (bitching, hair-pulling, rrairrrrrrw!), or will it all be a whitewash of forced smiles and sweet sisterhood?

One of the worst Mormon/polygamist sayings is "Keep Sweet", and it might as well be embroidered on a sampler on the wall of every room (and how many would that be? Each wife has her own self-contained apartment, though nobody explains where they'll stash Wife #4). The truth is, Kody, who complains all the time about how tired he is (all that crawling from room to room?), will now have four flavours to choose from every night, with his only problem being keeping his "schedule" straight. It must be nice to be able to ejaculate on cue. Meantime, these sweet sisters have to grit their teeth and wait for their turn.

They're the unpaid help in the harem, programmed from birth to obey male-imposed rules in a patriarchal culture that withholds any control over their intimate lives. Though one of the wives (which one? Damned if I know, they're all blonde/bland) insists they don't "do weird" (i. e., Mormon orgies of four people rolling around on a king-sized bed), the whole premise of the show is more cringe-worthy than that last episode of Hoarders, where the old lady's house was so fouled with cat-shit that it had to be gutted to be made inhabitable.

So why do I watch these things? There isn't much on that's watchable besides Mad Men. And I will admit I have a fascination with the bizarre. I had no idea there was such a significant polygamous subculture in the States: I thought it was the province of crackpots who lived out in the desert with fifteen wives and a shotgun.

But is this Kody guy, this smarmy long-haired creep who oozes a sense of entitlement, this lone rooster in the henhouse, any less off-putting? While the family tries to figure out where to put the new wife (maybe Kody will build a shed for her out in the back yard), I contemplate the dynamics of other polygamous cultures in which the first wife always has the upper hand, the most power in a nearly-powerless situation.

Each succeeding wife has less control, and the last one, the little sister, has practically none. She is merely a sex toy for the husband, who has grown tired of all these breeding cows mooing around the place.

OK, so how long until she gets pregnant? Stay tuned.