*note* I do not specifically name the big, blonde, out of her mind actress who has a reality show on E!, for fear of anyone else involved in the following story finding it on Google.

Watching the ANS show, one might come to the conclusion that most of what goes on is a big act; a gimmick. You sit there gaping at the tv thinking, this cannot possibly be all true.

Are you one of those skeptics? Have I got a story for you. Next time you look at her on tv you will nod your head and say, well damn, that is not an act, she really is off her rocker!

File this one under celebrity true stories:

1995. Or 96. I was still married then, and it was fall, but still felt like summer. The summer had been odd, to say the least. We spent a week or two of August with a blonde psuedo-actress/celebrity who shall remain nameless here, but who is easily identifiable by the stature of her breasts and her hips and by the fortunes of her now dead, but then elderly and frail, husband and whom we shall call "A" so as not to place me in the path of people searching google for naked pictures of this model/B-movie actress/celebrity. And no, I have none.

I was, through marriage, related to the person who directed A in several of her stellar theatrical endeavors. This person also "kept the company" of A, if you know what I mean, and when he came to visit his family that summer, he brought the starlet along with him.

There are several stories I could tell you about the week or so that the reality show star was here, but I won't. Not now. But I will tell you about when she returned for a visit in the fall. You should keep in mind that during the August week she was here, her hosts and their family had gone from star struck to scornful in one fell swoop.

It was September, maybe two weeks after school started. My then husband's grandfather had gone missing and the next week his body turned up in a dumpster in the Bronx. It was, obviously, a difficult time for the family. We set about the business of planning a funeral and everything that entails. The relative in California, A's director, was called. He was told to come for the funeral of his father. But not to bring A with him. This wasn't the time nor the place for her histrionics.