Real Housewives Recap

Mad Hatter’s Tea caps a poopy episode of Real Housewives of Dallas

Cynthia Smoot, LeeAnne Locken, Tiffany Hendra

Cynthia Smoot, LeeAnne Locken, and Tiffany Hendra at the Mad Hatter's Tea.

Photo by Bill Matlock

Hats off to the cast of Real Housewives of Dallas, the latest installment in the worldwide franchise. They have wasted no time gettin’ all up in each other’s lip gloss about trivial issues. This week it was about rude headwear and a certain housewife’s verbal diarrhea.

Titled “Mad as a Hatter,” the episode took its ladies and viewers to the Mad Hatter’s Tea & Luncheon, the annual fancy-fancy fundraiser put on by the Women’s Council of the Dallas Arboretum. With tickets ranging from $350 to $35,000 (for a table), the party is pretend Ascot sans the horse race. It’s just about hats. Big hats. Outrageous hats. (This year’s luncheon just happens to be April 21 — and we'll have a recap.)

Saucy Brandi Redmond decides she’ll make her own hat for the tea party. Now lead (unmarried) housewife LeeAnne Locken, the not-so-rich society doyenne, likes to knock younger, ginger-haired, rung-climber Brandi for acting shallow and tacky. LeeAnne, who says she “grew up a carny kid,” is quick to remind anyone within spitting distance that Brandi was a Cowboys cheerleader. Brandi calls LeeAnne “Miss Dallas Charity 24/7.”

In Housewives terms, these two have the snake/mongoose chemistry of RHONY’s Bethenny and Dorinda. Claws are always out with these gals. Nicely polished in Essie’s latest spring pastels, natch.

Brandi’s homemade hat turns into a hot-glued hot mess covered in what looks like mounds of Spanish moss, Easter grass, plastic dogs, and teeny tiny turds. It’s the size of a beach umbrella. If she finished the outfit with fishnets, a red one-piece swimsuit, and a little American flag, Brandi could play Little Edie in Grey Gardens.

About those turds. From RHOD’s premiere last week, you might remember that Brandi loves talking shit about shit. She had already incurred LeeAnne’s wrath by mentioning No. 2 at the No Tie Dinner & Dessert kick-off lunch at Marie’s house. But poo-pooing Brandi’s loose talk seems to make her double down. Baking a chocolate cake with her ginger-haired daughters this week, Brandi, holding a tiny white dog while stirring the batter, says “It looks like poop pie!” (It kinda does.)

And then she shows up at the Mad Hatter’s in that hat bedecked with faux droppings. She even plops a large cigar-shaped one in LeeAnne’s chair as a joke, which sends LeeAnne into a tattling frenzy over to party maestro Steve Kemble, who flushes at the scoop.

Other things happened on RHOD this week. YouTube channel star Tiffany and her Aussie musician husband Aaron shopped for a mansion. (“We’ve been married 11 years and never seen each other pee,” she overshares. The couple also prays over breakfast.) Brandi and bestie Stephanie donned massive fur coats to knock a dirt dauber’s nest off the balcony at Stephanie’s palatial home.

Cary, who looks a lot like Stephanie, confessed she didn’t know you weren’t supposed to touch the glowing heating coils in a toaster oven. (Is it a Sonya Morgan toaster oven? Don’t make the mistake of mentioning those!)

But mostly it was about crazy hats and one redhead stuck in Freud’s “anal stage,” which is supposed to end about age 3. “Embrace poop, people,” Brandi says directly to the camera. Oh, we have, darling. See you next week.

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Real Housewives of Dallas airs at 9 pm Mondays on Bravo.

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All Eyes on Them

Dallas alt hip-hop group wins prestigious Tiny Desk Contest by NPR

Cure for Paranoia/Facebook

As winners of the Tiny Desk Contest, Cure for Paranoia will record their own Tiny Desk concert and go on tour.

Few live recording studios or musical web series have the cultural sway of NPR's Tiny Desk, and a Dallas band is poised to make an impactful debut: Cure For Paranoia, an alternative hip-hop project by rapper Cameron McCloud and producers Tomahawk Jonez and Jay Analo, has won the high-stakes annual Tiny Desk Contest for 2026.

They'll record their official Tiny Desk show "soon," the announcement by NPR says.

Winning the concert also means Cure for Paranoia is going on tour. The only Texas stop will be at Emo's Austin on June 24.

Tiny Desk is known for platforming both niche and majorly successful artists — NPR posted a new Foo Fighters set on YouTube on May 13 — for stripped-down sets that are literally played behind former All Things Considered director Bob Boilen's old desk. (Fun fact for Texans: Tiny Desk was created because folk artist Laura Gibson was disappointed with the sound at her South by Southwest show in Austin in 2008, and she wanted a redo.)

Most artists who appear on Tiny Desk more than 15 years later are already well-known, at least in their specific circles. But the Tiny Desk Contest, which launched in 2015, helps a growing group of newer, unsigned artists get their foot in the door. Contestants record one video of them performing a single song behind a desk, and a jury of radio staff and musicians chooses their favorite.

In their audition video, Cure for Paranoia gathered 11 musicians around a truly tiny desk and in front of downtown Dallas' iconic gigantic eyeball sculpture. They played the song "No Brainer," a frenetic track that starts with clever boasts and becomes a criticism of racism in the United States.

McCloud, a pre-school teacher, is known independently of Cure for Paranoia for rapping to his social media following about politics and current events. Some of those lyrics made it into "No Brainer." He says he started the group because he found that music was more helpful than medication for coping with bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

Alex Marrero, host of the Austin-based KUTX show Horizontes, was one of the judges this year. He was impressed with the visuals in Cure for Paranoia's audition.

“When this popped up, I immediately felt something different," he wrote in a blurb for the announcement. "It just jumped out. The visuals were super cool and creative, BUT I could still totally envision them bringing the heat behind the Desk.”

Madison McFerrin, jazz vocalist and daughter of the famous singer Bobby McFerrin, was one of the musical judges.

"Cure For Paranoia’s energy is infectious, fresh and distinctly theirs — exactly what you want in a Contest winner!" she wrote.

McCloud's post on Instagram announcing the group's win has only been up for three hours at the time of this article's publication, and it already has more than 8,000 likes. The YouTube audition has garnered 74,000 views.

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