Super, thanks for asking!

Rather than wait for shows like Desperate Housewives to finally show here, and annoyed with other forms of downloading, I've been downloading TV shows through the US Itunes Music Store. Maybe I'm a sucker for paying $2.50 ($2US) an episode, but life is too shrt to sepnd time doanloading fake files, and I'm just not skilled at the whole thing. As I've said before, fucking technophobia.

Anyway, through Itunes I've discovered I can watch shows that mylovelyAmericanfriend (MLAF) recommends, and one he showed me an episode of was My Super Sweet Sixteenth, an MTV show about, yep, rich kids having mega parties to celebrate turning 16. Sure the show is probably staged (and the net is full of people defening their friends against the way they were shown on the show - but that doesn't save the people who are still volunteering to be on the show in its third season!), but it is still car crash TV par excellence, the next best thing to Being Bobby Brown.

Most of the Sweet Sixteeners are girls, but all of them are princesses.


Take Cindy. I think she's half Filipina, but perhaps that's just because her mother reminds me of Rose Hancock-Porteous. She has a Cinderella themed party - but sadly sans pumpkin style coach - and hires a dancer to help her recreate the dance scene from Dirty Dancing. She throws out an uninvited guest, threatening to fight in her dress, and she bickers with her mother, who is vicariously living her own unrealised sweet sixteen dreams (in her own white princess dress).

Now meet Bjorn (you pronounce the J as a J not a Y). One of the few males featured on the show, he's a raging pre-homo who has a party in his favourite place - the mall - with its own fashion show. His parents seem delightfully unphased by his ass bandit antics, but all hell breaks loose when there are only 3 corsets for the show and 4 best friends who want to wear them. Bjorn calls himself a 'Divo', or male Diva, and he sure as hell acts it. I do like the customised jacket he shows off at the end though.

Carlyisia (there's a name for you CSH) is the daughter of R'n'B singer Gerald Levert. I don't know why the hell he let her appear on this show,
but her sweet sixteenth comes to a head with her performance of her first single (after she signs autographed CDs as party invites). Carlysia has a personal assistant. However, she lacks looks and talent. Whilst no-one seems to notice that she's a tad porkier than Beyonce (who she compares herself to), her father does threaten to cancel the performance when her singing practice reveals the likelihood that she'll embarass herself and her family. I think Gerald should have made good on the threat, but you can judge Carlysia's vocal chops for yourself here.


Best of all is Ava, who manages double points by being both a Jewish American Princess AND Persian (as MLAF put it, a PerJAP). Ava goes to Paris to find a dress with her mother, friend and stylist and then complains that she can't find what she wants (her mother refuses to let her buy a dress that is too revealing). Now don't be fooled into thinking that a trip to paris might be her birthday present or anything, because there's a car (which oddly is a Range Rover - maybe she knew in advance that the other kids on this show all seem to get Mercedes) and a $200,000US Arabian Night themed party, complete with handpicked college waterpolo players to lift her sedan chair.

Ava gets herself in a spot of trouble when (at age 15, remember) she runs off to Santa Barbara with her cousin and doesn't tell her Mom. She is outraged when Mom responds by cancelling her credit card, and many tears are shed when she is told she won't be getting a car for her birthday as a result. Luckily, her parents relent just in time for the party.

Of course there is a stern warning: Ava must respect her parents.

"Yeah... That'll definitely happen."