New stuff in purple
 
 
Every once in a while, I notice some things about Wild Orchid.  Did you realize this stuff yet?
 
 - The initials (before Stef got married, anyway) of Renee and Stefanie are exact opposites of each other:  RS and SR
 
 - If you mix the favorite colors of both girls - baby blue and pink - you get a very-close-to-orchid shade
 
 - The girls are also in exact opposite birth order chronologically  - Stefanie's the oldest, yet her birthday comes last, in May. 
 
 - All three girls have each been in the middle of an album cover; Renee on the first cd, Stefanie on Oxygen, and Stacy on the ill-fated Fire cover.
Hmm, could this be construed as a sign?  There are several other things that seem to foreshadow the pruning of Wild Orchid:
 1.Stacy isn't heard on Paint The Sky - which was pretty much the last song trio-WO did
  2. On the last episode of E's Gossip Show that WO did, they come back from a commercial break and Stacy says, "And guess what? We're Wild Orchid!"  Stefanie turns to her and says, "Shut up."
 3. Stacy's Shoutback shirt probably reads "Wild and Free", but the "and" is missing, leaving "Wild" on one side...and "Free" on the other
 
  Gossip Show goofs
There are at least two mistakes.  In the first episode WO did, you can tell they shot the recording booth scene more than once (probably due to "hubby Bobby" - say that 5 times fast) because Stefanie says something like, "The Gossip's own George Whipple..." Shouldn't that have been Gossip Show's own?
 
 In the third episode: "We don't want to confuse you with the details, so here's Michael to do just that." What, confuse us with the details??
  
Stefanie's idea of a "well-balanced meal" is Twizzlers and Honey Nut Cheerios?!?!?!
 Okay, you can barely see the Twizzlers. Renee (who looks like she's asleep because my capture button's slow) has one too, though.
 
I figured it out!!: in the Christmas Gossip Show, when the trio is acting out someone's stupid idea of a joke and giving each other Oxygen, Renee exhibits what I like to refer to as "the speeding car speech impediment" - starts out low, like she's some distance away from you and then gets much louder in the middle as she passes you and then dwindles as she drives away... What I hear is: "Not to say that our cd isn't valuable or anything, but we kinda get 'em for free, so you something something something."   After cranking the volume up and sitting with my ear to the speaker, I've made out "perk", which makes sense, but what's the rest? Is it one of those adages you have to have been brought up hearing to understand (kind of like those parks and sparks, huh, Renee)?
 
After the girls torture Rudy, the much-forgotten puppy, Stefanie says, "As you can see, we are hard at work..."  Doing what, providing PETA with incriminating evidence?
 Might wanna put that dog down, Stace! It would have been really hilarious if he'd peed on her...
 
 Great Pretenders
One of my favorite funny, nonsensical WO quotes (qWOtes?) comes from a Great Pretenders "Best Of" ep. - the first, I think.  It's hard to catch in its entirety, because the theme music rises up over it, but what I heard was:
Stacy: "Why is the teddy bear yours?"
Stefanie: "Because he's mine.  (muffled by theme)He doesn't like you."
 
Stacy gets her back, though, in another Best Of, after Stefanie steals a slice of pizza Stacy had her eye on:
Stefanie: "Wanna bite?"
Stacy: (shakes her head) "You have cooties."
 
I just about died when they started thwacking each other with the pillows.
 
GP deserves a few more mentions.  I was going to put this in a fanfic, but if you actually watched all the seasons and kept track, you'd have noticed that there were several Stefanie/Stephanies, at least one Stacy that I know of...but no contestants named Renee (suits me just fine, I've had enough of substitutes - there's no Renee like the real one).
 
If you were to splice all the episodes together, you can see the slow metamorphosis from Stacy to Fergie.
 
On tap for the Best of Karaoke (in case you weren't listening) Bubbly Baby Aspirin and Refreshing Robitussin - mmm, mmm, mmm...ten thousand dry, choky snacks, and they only had 3 bottles of whatever-the-hell-that-was? 
  Thanks probably to the bloopers, Renee goes from having a cracker in her hand to a half-eaten slice of pizza and back to a cracker in about 5 seconds.
 
Shoutback
 While it was great finally seeing WO get the attention that they deserve, it's not without it's quirks.
Was Renee actually miked for half the show?  Simon Sez turn down the music!
She came through loud and clear when Stefanie was describing the bus-licking incident (ew!), saying
"It's true, I swear, I was there, too!" Yes, sweetie, we know...you were supposed to be...
 
 The word "actually" is used 5 times in 2 minutes - 4 of them by Renee
 
The a capella bit towards the end contains a little homage to En Vogue - "Wanna hear it?  Here it go", from the beginning of "Free Your Mind"
 
 
The-Whatever-Family-Channel stuff
What did Stacy mean, on the Front Row Center concert, when she said, "This is for all the people who didn't believe?"  Believe what?
 
I get the unintended irony that it's Renee doing the near-swearing, but why did We-Change-Ownership-Every-Week-Family-Channel blur "Stuttering"? It was already pre-censored! And if it was so offensive, why did they even let them perform it?
 
The "Wild Orchid sign", in case you never noticed, is two "I love you" signs butted up against one another.
 
Near the end of "Just Another Girl, Stacy's so busy playing to the audience that you see Stef motion for her to move up ahead of her to end the song.  Shades of that old KI "Last Dance" fiasco, huh, Stace?
 
 
- Does anyone else think it's creepy that, at about the same time the "Supernatural" video was out, Smash Mouth's video for "Walking on the Sun" had a beach scene with a sort of Stefanie look-alike? She pops out from behind a...pole, I believe, I haven't seen that video in a long time
 
- Is it just me, or are 2 out of 3 girls wearing the same shoes about 80% of the time? 
 
- How hard is it, honestly, to spell "Stefanie" correctly?
Of course, like a zillion people spell Stacy with the e, too (supposedly, it's the traditional spelling).  It's so frustrating - trust me, I'm speaking from experience, here!
 
Now, even though I'm a die-hard Renee fan, even I agree with this: There are no a's in Renee, so where does "Nae Nae" come from??  Either way, I find myself with the urge to go, "Ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne!" instead of "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!"
This and other little name-related headaches falls under what I like to call -trom Trauma" affectionally named after...well, you know who.
 
I kept the graphic I made for my fanlisting for WO's first album (even though I no longer run the fanlisting).  I think I might make one for every album, just for the hell of it.
 This may be the first time any of you are seeing this.  Came out gorgeous, didn't it?

I have this on my Kids Inc site, but it should be here, too because I don't care what they say, WO fans are mostly KI fans, anyway.
If you watched Great Pretenders, then you've probably made out the line in the theme song that goes: "You're the new sensation, all across the nation..." Well, there's also a line in the KI theme song that goes, "All around the nation, we're the new sensation..." Coincidence??? Hmm...

 On Duran Duran's new cd, Astronaut, in the song "Taste the Summer", there's a line that goes, "Wild Orchid on the wind..."  .
 
 
Despite what brine-shrimp-for brains Bucher has, ex-NRG member Micki Duran was actually on the seventh season of KI, not eighth.  I guess he can't spell "seventh".
 
Oh, and speaking of atrocious spelling, if you're going to insult me, could you at least use proper spelling and grammar? If I see the phrase, "your a phsyco/psyko/psyco" one more time, I'm liable to start sharpening my meat cleaver!