of snarks and softies...

I'm just going to make this clear: I absolutely adore, love, want to smother Richard Lawson of Gawker (and, for a short time, tv.com), in the most unabashedly embarrassing way. His recaps, in all their sprawling fanciful wonderment, bring inappropriate giggles to my face without fail. That said, my darling Mr. Richard unconventionally broke with his snark-filled tone of bemused hilarity and asked his readers to join with him in boycotting the final season of The Hills.

Why, you may ask? Morality, kids. It's about right and wrong, truth and principle!

Now, I don't mean to patronize Richard. But let's consider his reasoning. Along with the impressionable MTV audience that panders to the aspirational tinge of the Hill's brand of "reality," he makes the following impassioned plea:

The Hills used to be kind of a good time — you could make fun of it, dissect the outfits, laugh at the sweeping music and landscape shots. But now... ugh. It's skidded into the realm of grotesque dance macabre. There might not be much to be done about Heidi now. She may be too in the thrall of the terrible fame monster. This might be her life. And that is a genuinely sad thing, for which we may be partly responsible. But we can at least, from here on out, stand on the principle that we won't give them anymore ratings, we won't do them the benefit of making fun of them, we won't keep on with the indulging.

The pretense here is that not only is the Hills seeping into the brains of teen girls, and apparently misguided aunties, it's literally and figuratively disfiguring the pristine tabula rasa that was Heidi Montag. Oh boy...

I have a hard time lending my snark-filled ears on this one. Beyond the fact that Richard is not known for his calls for rational, moral contemplation, I feel that the pot is, well, you know.

We can blame Adam Divello until the end of time for saturating our corneas with the beautiful, styrofoam-brained kids turned pseudo-celeb socialites of California, but can one man a real life pop culture disaster make? I would say no. As a regular recap master for the Hills, and many other "reality" shows, Mr. Lawson makes a living off of pointing out the inane, profane, and simply ridiculous nature of these shows. The cast of the Hills chose to go forth with their mock reality soap opera, regardless of the twisted tales they spun, and the pre-fab antics they carried out for carefully positioned cameras. Everybody was watching, even though reality, it was not.

Perhaps it's because the well manicured mavens of the Hills were simply allowed to stray too far into fake reality land that it was too untenable to expect viewers to stick around. Hence, it's ending! The fact that it's too cartoonish has driven us away. But Richard contends that we are leaving real people by the wayside, namely, Heidi. This big cruel world ripped her from the rainbows and unicorns of TV land, chewed up her brain, and spit her back out as a plastic, pinched Heidi doll. Heidi is not TV's first "character" to publicly break down before our eyes, be it sit-com star, or reality whore (ps, did anyone see Oprah today, Geez Todd Bridges!). She won't be the last. Fame is it's own monster, quoth Lady Gaga, and everyone who wanted in on it should have already known the snake pit they were walking into.

But Mr. Lawson is concerned, and feels that we should be too. It's getting too dark and scary to handle. However, it's not the reality TV game that has turned so cruel, it's simply his opinion that's changed. Instead of being able to mock television, be it reality programming or otherwise, so we can distance ourselves from it and analyze it without getting sucked into its vortex, Rich drank the Kool Aid, along with all of those impressionable, aspirational youngin's he mentions. When your snark goes soft, I believe it's just you, my dear Richard, that needs to turn off the tele and take a deep breath. Your cynicism won't be far behind.

This is what happens when you watch 'Intervention' and 'Real Housewives of New York'

I'm in the process of going through a friend break up. This has happened before in my life, but never on such a deep-seeded level. Recently there have been articles talking about how a friend break up can be just as destructive as the end of a romantic relationship, or even a death in the family. Considering the emotional stress I've gone through to reach the conclusion that I need to leave behind a friendship I've spent so much time to build, that association seems all the more appropriate.

Friendships are an interesting business. If you happened to see the PBS program "This Emotional Life" about how and why we form friendships, it's almost depressing to know how much forming meaningful relationships with others is really just about ourselves. In the end, we are all looking for a way to affirm our self-image or our sense of value and self-worth. Truly altruistic relationships, with no motive for personal gain, are so rare it's almost silly to think our chosen friendships can exist without it. That's not always a bad thing, though. It can actually lead to very positive effects for all involved. But in other instances, this careful balancing act of pursuing our own needs through others while maintaining a functioning relationship can be thrown terribly and disastrously off base.

Like romantic relationships, friendships can be abusive and manipulative. Somewhere along the line, or perhaps even from the outset, the balance of power in a friendship can allow for one party to dominate the other with their actions, emotions, and needs. Not unlike couples in abusive relationships, or friends and family of addicts, co-dependence and periods of ill-fated reasoning and explaining away the corrosive attachments we make to toxic people are realities of imbalanced, unhealthy friendships. There is a sense that with enough effort we can help people change, although, as 'Intervention' teaches us, we don't have the power to change others; they have to be willing and able to change themselves.

I've finally come to realize that I have been battling through a friendship, hoping that if I was earnest enough in my periodic entreaties for my friend to change behavior that either hurt me or allowed her to manipulate and deteriorate our friendship, things could get better between us. For a long time I felt that we could mend all of the hurt we've inflicted on each other over the years. At this point in our lives, this friend is more like family, making it even harder to break away from the long history we have. But this person has also become someone that is harder for me to reason with or talk to civilly about our issues. Most people already know that we can't get through an evening together without rubbing salt into wounds like peevish children. It's like this season of 'Real Housewives of New York,' in which Bethenny and Jill can be friends no more. Everything is just too complicated and toxic and ridiculous and twisted by ego to repair.

I didn't need a TV show to inform me that I was in a bad way, but I needed to align my ailing friendship with co-dependence to see that I'm only hurting myself in hoping that I have the power to change someone else or the choices they make. However, in this case, there are no intervention specialists to guide me. There is no cathartic or poignant way to cut ties or feel vindicated. I think that's what kept me from walking away until now: I wanted my friend to see how wrong she was. But now, I will be in the wrong if I let myself continue trying to keep a sinking ship afloat, drowning my happiness in the process.

And for anyone that saw this, it was heartbreaking for me:

The Real Housewives of New York City - Videos - Relive the Ambush | Bravo TV Official Site