Hoboken-based comedienne Eileen Budd is back with another recap. Comment below!
Hookah On a Feeling
Chris and Albie Manzo are starting out on a new venture courtesy of uncle Chris Laurita’s capital. New Star Group is a new production/PR company – or some kind of a shell for a business where you can just think up crap and it gets produced (e.g. young Chris wants to make a book about toilets and going to the bathroom, making the crap reference literally literal). Chris’ other idea is to create a cell phone with a built in breathalyzer. Not a bad idea. It would sure stop those drunk dials to ex-lovers at 3 a.m. when the bar is closing and you don’t have anyone to go home with. Quiet Albie actually gets in the best quip by saying, “Ashley should have that on her Twitter account.”
I’m not sure if this New Star Group is legit, because it’s headquartered in the former house of Caroline and Chris’ parents, and the boys’ new office used to be Grandma’s craft room. “I used to s**t here,” Chris Manzo says. Judging from his ideas, he still does. One of the first clients for New Star is a company that sells black water. Caroline is so proud that her “Two kids from Jersey are selling black water.” Helloooo, Caroline. Hurricane Irene just passed through and I’m pretty sure you can find black water flooding the streets of Hoboken on almost every corner.
The most interesting thing about this whole new business is that we actually found out where Chris Laurita gets his money from. He’s in the wholesale apparel business. Hmm, wonder if he supplies the wardrobe for the show. As I write this, I bet that courtesy of Mr. Laurita, some 6-year-old in Vietnam is gluing plastic rubies into the shape of a heart on a polyester tube top destined for Melissa Gorga.
Meanwhile, the gang is getting ready for Richie Wakile’s birthday at a Middle Eastern restaurant. For some reason, he makes reference to that favorite kids’ show, “Mr. Neighbors.” Kathy corrects him by letting him know it’s “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Richie came to this country from Beirut when he was 8 so he may not know all the proper American references, but somewhere along the line, he picked up a Bronx/Brooklyn/Jersey/Staten Island accent that makes the gang from Jersey Shore seem like they’re speaking the Queen’s English in comparison. You gotta love Richie. He makes no apologies. “Anybody gets insulted by my jokes, f**k ‘em,” he tells the camera. When the talk turns to Teresa, Kathy, emphasizing her non-jealousy, softly offers her best for cousin T. “There’s a million stars in the sky and they all shine just as bright,” Kathy utters in her spaced-out Khalil Gibran impression. I think Kathy took a few tokes on a hookah before they even left for Rich’s party. I hate to break this to you, Kathy, but all the stars really don’t shine just as bright. It just seems that way courtesy of those home-baked hashish brownies you munched on right before you took a toke on the hookah.
Everyone takes a toke or two on a hookah at Richie’s party just as everyone gets in on dancing with the belly dancers. That includes Kathy’s sister, Rosie, who is dressed in her best train conductor uniform, hat and all. Of course, Joe Gorga has to start it off dancing seductively. Wife Melissa eventually gets up to join in. “Mel can sing very well. She can’t f**ing dance to save her life though,” Richie observes. As Kathy previously noted, “Some people tell it to you straight. Some kiss your a–. Richie ain’t kissing your a–.” I admire your style, Richie, for calling things as you see them – but, sometimes your judgment is a little off. For instance, Melissa can dance as well as she can sing. I don’t think I need to elaborate. And by the way, what was with Joe Gorga smelling Melissa’s armpits at the party? I know pheromones can be sexy but Joe was getting horny from sniffing Right Guard. Then he points out Melissa’s scar on her back from when she had surgery on her aorta when she was a kid. “I’m the second person in the world to have heart surgery through the back,” Melissa proudly states. Perhaps they performed her lobotomy the same way.
Then we go on to Lauren Manzo’s opening party for her new cosmetic business. Teresa shows Jacqueline the red and purple fur coat she’s going to wear. Jacqueline says she’s not such a fancy dresser as T. “Teresa is more shiny.” Perhaps “gaudy” was the word you were thinking of instead, Jacqueline. Then Jacqueline pulls out the black bedazzled number that she got for a mere $55 and T. tries to muster up the excitement to say it’s nice but you can see she must be vomiting in her throat just a little. Hey, Jacqueline, did you have to pay your husband $55 for that frock? I’m sure he imported it (complete with the tear stains of little Bao Phong) for a mere $2.50. Again, a question that defies an answer: Why were Jacqueline and Teresa drinking wine and nibbling on hors d’ouevres in Jacqueline’s bathroom? I think I must’ve missed that article on modern entertaining in Martha Stewart Living.
Nothing much exciting happens at Lauren’s party aside from Melissa and Teresa rubbing against each other’s furs as they hug hello. Does a hug count if you can’t even feel it? Ashley shows up late – surprise! – but she does come through with a design for Lauren’s business T-shirts. It’s a picture of a face. Wow, talk about thinking outside the box for a cosmetic business…
Next we get to see Teresa in mommy mode taking the little possessed Melania and her baby sister grocery shopping. Melania climbs up and stands – yes, stands – on top of the piles of fruit, which if you never washed your fruit before, is a good reason you should start doing so now. Then she tries to balance on the ledge of the frozen food section and falls in. If peas could talk, I’m sure they were screaming to get away from her. Mommy Teresa is too busy trying to call her brother to pay attention to Melania’s audition for Cirque du Soleil. Melania goes on to create more havoc, pulling packages out of the freezer and throwing them on the floor. Teresa keeps telling her to put things back because they eat things that are nutritional and mommy makes things homemade. Shortly after this declaration, T. asks her if she wants frozen pigs in the blanket. Maybe that was prompted by her call to her brother. The best part of this whole scene is T. telling Melania at the end, “You were very good.” Are you kidding me, Teresa? If ever there was a case for slipping a kid some Benadryl in her juice box, going grocery shopping with Melania would be it.
Over at Melissa’s, her sisters gather to hear her record “On Display.” Her producers, Soul Diggaz, tell Mel that her first efforts are a little “pitchy.” I don’t know much about the music business but I’m guessing “pitchy” means the same thing as “horrendous.” We are then treated to a flashback of little Melissa dancing on a white coffee table circa 1989, her father videotaping her performance and calling her a star. Mel starts to cry because she knows she has to become the next Kim Zolciak for the sake of her dear, departed dad. So Soul Diggaz auto-tune the song until we can’t tell the difference if it’s Melissa singing or Cher belting one out at a gay tea dance. Then everyone leaves the recording studio exhausted but content at a job well faked.
Book him, Dano
Teresa gets ready for her big book signing in Mendham, and even though it’s snowing, quite the crowd of close to 15 show up. T. is eagerly awaiting the arrival of her brother, but little does she know that her husband, Joe Zeppole, sent his brother-in-law threatening texts if he shows up. Joe Gorga tells wife, Melissa, that T.’s husband said, “Yous so fake, it makes me sick.” I wonder if the Blackberry tried to autocorrect the word “yous.” Joe Zeppole supposedly goes on to say, “I’ll break your jaw and wire it shut.”
Kathy and Richie do show up, however, at the near empty store. Kathy even brings her own copy of the cookbook and has her cousin sign it. Richie just wants to know, “Where’s the champagne? There’s no hors d’oeuvres, nothing like that?” To the camera, Kathy cries, “I know she loves me.” You gotta admit, Kathy tries her best to sprinkle the world with goodness and kindness. But she better not sprinkle her cookies with the same and bring them to Teresa’s because we all know that T. will just throw sprinkle cookies away.
Finally, just as Teresa is about to leave the now deserted store, brother Joe shows up with Melissa in tow and asks, “How do I buy a book?” Uh, Joe, it’s a book store. I know it’s a hard concept to grasp, but it goes like this: You pick up a book you want to buy, carry it to the cash register where they ring it up, put it in a bag, and it then becomes your very own to put on a bookshelf and never look at again. Joe winds up buying a stack of T.’s books and asks her to autograph one of them for him. She starts to cry as she writes, “I love you more than anything in this world. I miss my brother.” I’m sure her husband and kids will enjoy watching that. Then her brother wants her to actually read what she wrote aloud like he’s trying to drive the lesson home. He kisses her but she wants a more heartfelt hug. Joe goes on to tell his sister about how her husband threatened him and she needs to talk to him about his behavior. “There can’t be anything between us.” I’m sorry, but their relationship creeps me out. It’s like they were Siamese twins who were separated at birth and then became lovers or something.
Teresa tries to rationalize that her husband just didn’t want her to get hurt. Melissa says that this was the first book signing they had actually been invited to. But T. tries to justify her lack of a personal invitation to her book signings by saying she posted the information on Facebook. I love people who think that everyone is just waiting and living for a family member to post something on Facebook every day like, “Grandpa’s colonoscopy went well. No polyps and the doctor said his colon is clean as a whistle!”
As they leave the bookstore, Melissa throws T. a final glance back that, if it had been accompanied with a sound, would resemble a 5-year-old’s “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.” Joe tells his wife that he doesn’t want to get into this “Nit-nit.” Like his sister, he has a way with words. I’m assuming he meant “nit-picking” but, then again, he could have meant “nit wit,” which would have been even more apropos. T. leaves the store thinking the encounter was disgusting.
When she gets home after almost five hours, she finds that husband, Joe Zeppole, has been drinking wine with a bunch of people in the house. T. is not too fond of her hubby’s behavior when he gets drunk. Gia’s gymnastics mat is on the floor and Joe Z. wants to show his own gymnastic prowess. He takes a flying leap and roll only to land on the marble floor face down, chipping his tooth, which sends Gia into tears. Joe Z. thinks that the “maloik” (evil eye) is around them. “I don’t like your f**king brother,” he tells Teresa. He further adds, for the sake of the others present, that her brother is upset because, “He’s short. She’s taller and has more hair.”
T. comes to her brother’s defense by saying, “He’s getting poison from his wife.” Wait, I’m confused. I thought Joe Gorga had poison that he had to let out by giving it to his wife. Then T. confronts her husband by asking if he sent her brother threatening texts. He goes and gets his phone and we see that it was T.’s brother who called Joe Zeppole a “stupid ass.” Joe Zeppole responded, “Watch who you call a stupid ass before I put your mouth in a metal cage.” Okay, that’s a little different than T.’s brother telling her that her husband said he’d break his jaw and wire it shut, but I guess it’s a question of semantics. Maybe Joe Zeppole wasn’t actually threatening to break T.’s brother’s jaw – maybe he just meant he was going to put it a Hannibal Lecter-type device.
We find out that years ago, Joe and T. broke up for a while over family issues. Joe says, “I got rid of yous.” (Too bad there’s no BlackBerry to autocorrect speech.) To add salt to the wound, he tells her, “You came back to me; I didn’t come back to you.” Furthermore, Joe Zeppole did not like the way his family was treated at baby Gorga’s christening, noting that even his mother’s hair was pulled. When it comes to his brother-in-law, as far as he’s concerned, “We’ll fight until the end of time.” In most cases, mutual dislike comes down to the long and short of it – but in the case of those two, it’s more like it comes down to the short and the short of it.
Next episode: “What happens when Joe [Gorga] comes to Hoboken? It becomes Joe-boken!”
For recaps of prior episodes, click the links below.
Eileen Budd can be reached at pretty.funny@hotmail.com or leave a comment here. Check out her latest prose piece at asininepoetry.com.