SHAHS of SUNSET ♛ new reality show on Bravo abt wealthy Persian-American thirty-somethings ♛ best cast member poll

http://i.imgur.com/47oa4.jpg Golnesa "GG" Gharachedaghi - an exotic beauty with a fiery temper and very little filter.
http://i.imgur.com/g42cx.jpg Mike Shouhed - part of the self-appointed “Persian Real Estate Mafia” in Los Angeles.
http://i.imgur.com/6kH00.jpg Sammy Younai - a residential developer in Beverly Hills specializing in building multi-million dollar homes specifically for the Persian community.
http://i.imgur.com/eCiiU.jpg Asa Soltan Rahmati - a controversial singer/artist who prides herself on living the “Modern Persian gypsy bohemian lifestyle” and is prominent in the Venice artist scene.
http://i.imgur.com/mhGzO.jpg Reza Farahan - a 38-year-old prominent player in the Los Angeles real estate world and one of few openly gay Persians in the community.
http://i.imgur.com/P5oOd.jpg Mercedes "MJ" Javid - A known party girl, she sometimes struggles balancing her “networking” at night with her early mornings at the office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBOQiMxwk1o

Anyway I defer to the late great and uh oh I'm having a fantasy here.

one episode in and the only way to vote is Reza

i don't think i have anything to say about this except this is another reason i tend to avoid LA if i can

have you watched it yet

i haven't, i don't have a television and i don't really like reality shows

what's it like? is there any difference from other reality shows or is it basically the same real housewives type of stuff?

i've only seen colbert talking about the show but it seems like reza is the way to go.

its kind of halfway between jersey shore and real housewives, with more money and privilege (no one is married)

in the first episode, Sammy throws a pool party and rents a caged bengal tiger for it

hm well i know lots of people who could afford to do something like that but i certainly don't know anybody who would.

i think these people probably have more in common w/ the real housewives than they do with any persian people i know IRL so i probably wouldn't have anything interesting to say about it even if i watched the show

i guess i could probably comment on some of the locations but so could anybody who's spent time around UCLA

tehrangeles!

they are all in real estate

"tehrangeles" is a great expression and very apt

that makes sense gr8080 because 1) a lot of wealthy people in california are in real estate 2) a lot of the family wealth of iranian immigrants was made in real estate (back in iran)

real estate people in l.a. are horrible -- that's reason enough not to watch the show!

otm!!!!

also some of them are jewish and some are muslim, i didn't catch if any were baha'i or christian

this is the kind of show i will never watch but will enjoy clips on "The Soup" and Reza is the guy always show clips of on "The Soup" so him

lol @ scene showing mike taking a call on his blackberry in the middle of a business meeting to discuss that night's shabbat plans with his mother

i think its p obvious that Asa wasn't friends w/ any of these people until the show's producers introduced them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZP4mA9CGAE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdnJJUHGgHs

i highly doubt any of them are baha'i but it would be funny if one was, i am totally lapsed in my behavior, lifestyle and observance and it would be amusing to watch someone else try to negotiate that minefield w their mom and dad.

one thing shows like this always remind me is how ethnically diverse iranians are. there are something like a dozen ethnic groups other than persians, and that's not counting the different religious subgroups who more or less exclusively married each other from ottoman times until i dunno, the 30s or 40s (jewish, baha'i, christian, zoroastrian) and related groups like kurdish-iranians, turkish-iranian, armenian-iranians, georgian-iranians, etc

like mike sammy and asa i might have guessed were not iranian, reza and mercedes look persian to me, golnesa looks like some sort of iranian based on particular features, but i have never seen someone w/ that combination of features and bone structure (maybe nobody has and that's why they call her "exotic"?)

whoops the second paragraph starts w/ a leftover part of a pargraph i deleted that was about how depressing i think reality shows are

then i meant to delete that and say something like "when i go to LA i am always reminded how ..."

lol they already revealed she had a nose job when she was young

xpost re: GG's "exotic" features

there are something like a dozen ethnic groups other than persians

oops i often conflate Persian and Iranian even though I know better - should say Iranian in the thread title

question -- is there any difference b/t "persian" as a language and "farsi"? b/c i've seen both mentioned many times and as far as i can tell they're interchangeable.

no difference

all the "pars" words (persepolis, persia, parsi, etc) all actually derive from the same root as farsi, "fars", which is the name of the area (now a province) where persepolis was located

i guess a subtle difference in usage is that when people say "farsi" i want to say it's usually about the living language, but when they talk historically, you usually hear things like "ancient persian", "classical persian", "middle persian" etc ...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

mj runs this, the girl is a superstar

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.