Guilty pleasures.

I’ll begin by wishing everybody a happy and healthy Bastille Day. Celebrate the holiday in true Howdygram style ... get yourself an order of French fries and watch “A Tale of Two Cities” (the incredibly wonderful 1935 version with Ronald Colman) on TCM. Viva la France, y’all.

And now for my favorite guilty pleasure. I sincerely hope nobody is going to laugh at me about this, but a couple of months ago I got hooked on Bravo TV’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” I am without excuse and can’t figure out why I bother to watch, because these women are superficial, loud, Italian “Joisey” showoffs with obnoxious children, all living in gated mansions with the biggest furniture I’ve ever seen in my life. They have silicone boobs, voluminous hair extensions, wear four-inch heels around the house and go to daily nail appointments to make sure they always look their very best at the strip mall. (The entire state of New Jersey is one gigantic strip mall.) Last week they all got into a brawl at a country club fashion show and chased each other through the parking lot. It was great.

Theresa, second from the left, has a Neanderthal hairline and four hairy daughters who look exactly like her. The two on the right, Dina and Caroline, are sisters. The others apparently have no particular relationship to each other except for one common thread: everybody HATES the one in the middle, Danielle, who causes way too much trouble and always seems to be whining to a lawyer or the police about one exaggerated crisis or another. She’s actually pissed off so many people that she goes everywhere now with a bodyguard and thinks everybody wants to kill her. (She may be right.)

The show airs on Monday nights, so stay tuned for a Howdygram synopsis of each new episode. Thank you for reading this.