Do you remember Alex McCord? Of course you do. She's the Real Housewives of New York City reality show star with the sorta-gay husband who likes to pose nude a lot. If she was one of your favorites on RHoNY, fear not. She and hubby Simon and their two poor bastard fake French children will be stomping around Boerum Hill for the show's second season. Never mind that the pair were painted as status-hungry buffoons on the first season; filming begins soon for the second, and Silex are excited:

"Why wouldn't we do the show again?" Simon recently told New York magazine. "I mean, it's a total success. [Nine years ago] we were sitting around on our fourth or fifth date, at the Blue Water Grill, and Alex was telling me that she wants to be a famous actress and I'm sitting there going, 'Darling, if you were a famous actress, we wouldn't be sitting here on the sidewalk having dinner.' " Haha. Um. Sigh.

Simon, ever the ridiculous idiot, later elaborates:

It made social climbing out to be much more important to us than it is. I've always loved to study people. I mean, for example, Jill's from Long Island, and boy, that shows. You can see these sorts of people from areas outside Sydney and London as well. As for us, well, I use the Dickensian phrase: Who doesn't want to improve their station in life? Everyone does.

Which, OK. That is true to some extent but... Maybe there's something to be said for discretion. Or for tact. Or for not being so ridiculously pretentious that you flaunt your imagined successes — the gaudy trip to St. Barth's (during the inexpensive low season, no less), the huge celebrities conversed with (very briefly, I imagine), and, really, every other piece of "high-class" driftwood desperately clung to — as if they were something you were entitled to, simply by virtue of your wanting them. What Alex and Simon seem to promote as honesty about their ambition seems, in truth, to be a deep and abiding dissatisfaction with their lives that they've chosen, eerily, to bare to the the world. Or, at least the small microcosm of fraught wine drinkers who sit on their couches and gawp at the disaster once a week. But, no matter. However they're perceived (they mention something about how they're not umbrellas) Simon and Alex are happy with attention and will keep on chugging.

...'Darling, if you were a famous actress, we wouldn't be sitting here on the sidewalk having dinner.' "

Alex: "And then I said, 'Oh, yes, we would. It's just that there would be ten people taking our picture.' "

Simon: "And now we have that."