Remember the days when getting your basement or backyard cleaned up and decorated with balloons and streamers was a good look? Landing your older cousin to act as the designated DJ if you begged hard enough? When the idea of refreshments were limited to a lineup of Hawaiian Punch, Fanta, Welch's grape and Pepsi? Clearly, times done changed. Behold the phenomenon of MTV's hit reality series, My Super Sweet 16. The basic formula for the show is as follows: loaded parents who elevate their pint-sized prima donnas to Branch Davidian proportions of idol worship rather than discipline + bratty, demanding tweenyboppers = a ratings bonanza.

If you needed any further evidence that the stigma of beating your offspring's head to the white meat should be removed, tuning in wipes away all hesitation towards corporal punishment as a deterrent. I kept hearing about this show but never tuned in all the way through to see what the buzz was about. That is until this past weekend on Sunday afternoon when the infamous second season premiere from mid-August repeated. Jets-Dolphins wasn't till 4:15 and I still had another hour till the Yanks-Blue Jays at the Stadium. Something, anything would've been cool just to pass the time.

Enter Sophie Mitchell. The National Hurricane Center has already pegged Stan as next in line should another storm appear from the warm-watered Atlantic, but after seeing Teenzilla in action, they may want to reconsider a new namesake. Clearly, being a force of nature leaving an illogical path of self-possessed destruction makes her the perfect candidate for disaster christening. This 15-year-old biracial demon spawn of a well-to-do veterinarian from West Palm Beach, Florida on the cusp of her 16th birthday. Suffering from total detachment from the real world as she fancies herself as "not a star, I'm a diva!" looking like who shot John and forgot to kill him in a messy blowout from hell and waddling around in painfully unflattering preshrunk terrycloth sweats. To see the extent of her antics carried out over a 30 minute span requires a high tolerance for spoiled wenches who didn't get acquainted with the hard end of a belt buckle early on in life.

"I'd just say we're socially enhanced. A lot of people don't like me because I'm a bitch. But a lot of people would like to be me, because I'm blessed."

I suppose the loose translation here is keeping a spineless White woman in check who doesn't have the slightest inkling on how to put her damn foot down being the source from whom all blessings flow.

As part of her dutiful requirements of being the submissive variant to this equation, her mom agrees to bankroll this shindig to the cost of... (are you ready to have your jaw hit the floor?)

$180,000.

I shit you not.

Complete with a personal stylist hired for a cool 10 G's, the episode begins with Sophie looking for the perfect dress to wear on her big night. Mother and daughter head for the Betsey Johnson boutique to brainstorm through pastels, ruffles and chiffon. Being an irrational force of nature doesn't buy people who will tell you the truth. Betsey Johnson doesn't design clothes for girls with curves in mind, especially when the girl in question is shaped like a Hillshire Farm kielbasa straining to get out of its plastic casing.

The mid length halter number Dawn - the hired gun - allowed her stamp of approval on broke so many fashion laws, an extradition should've been in order. The little darling winds up resembling a cowbell with unsupported flapjack tits hanging around her armpits at the bodice. The effect was far more Miss Piggy than Marilyn Monroe. When her mom offers her input on suggestions and tries to come into the dressing room, Sophie pitches a shrieking tantrum in the middle of the store. Rather than hitting the butterball in the throat and dragging her into the parking lot empty handed, she scurries off to the sidelines and takes the verbal assaults without assuming any semblance of authority. Call it playing the race card or whatever, but it's too easy to see how Sophie's the shot caller with a non-Black parent at the helm.

The theme proposed from the hired party planners is Moulin Rouge brought to life with circus performers, can-can girls, bartenders serving up non-alcoholic drinks and an over-the-top birthday cake.

Of course prior to fast forwarding to the main event, more gleeful bitchery lies ahead with wittling down the names for the guest list. Like Noriega without the Nicaraguan accent and secret CIA backing, she takes pleasure in taking a wrecking ball to supposed "friends" feelings on determining who's in and who's OUT. And when the time comes to hand deliver the invitations, showing up to school in a white Rolls Royce only seems fitting for a girl's who's never had to work for anything. A fawning audience of peers gives Little Miss Sophie a feeling the Mission: Get My Classmates Buzzing has been accomplished. The monkey wrench comes when a girl who made the dire mistake of being on our princess's shit list wound up with an prized envelope.

Oh yes, it was about to be a what? A girlfight... brimming hotter than peppered chorizo off Collins Avenue, corotid arteries pulsing in full Valley girl rage, what could beat watching her sprint for the red feathered invite like an offering of Dunkin' Donuts (which she threw a damn tantrum over)?

And to think young men and women from the most poverty stricken areas of America are dying daily in Iraq to protect the lard asses of the world like her. The gray hairs must be coming faster and more furious than I thought because even at my most vapid moments as a teenager, I could always count on the open handed slap of reality from a West Indian mother who didn't play that shit. On a scale of 1 to 10 on the Richter scale, my worst hysterics would register as a mere ripple in comparison.

Since abortion's the new endangered species thanks to G. Dub's pending Supreme Court appointments, this damning piece of evidence should be compelling proof why the procedure needs to remain legal. The best ways to offset eroding abstinence club pledges is to make mandatory viewership of what's awaiting you 15 years after deciding that spreading your legs in the backseat of a '97 Honda Accord is more convincing than the old hat speeches from the parents will ever be.

Labels: MTV, My Super Sweet 16, teens