Review of Rumor Girls

Launched in January of 2006, Rumor Girls stars sibling vloggers Karla (who used to moonlight with another vlog, Mary and Karla) and Karen as they share the random tidbits of their lives in Portland, Maine, for your viewing pleasure. Karen owns Gilbert Creative Design, an advertising firm in Portland, while her sister Karla works as a cosmetologist. Securing a local cult following, the show is taped by the low-budget podcast production specialists at Franklin McMahon Studio. The sisters contribute roughly one weekly video episode of Rumor Girls and raunchier audio episodes called Rumor Girls Uncut and Rumor Girls Show Girls. The difference between the prime video show and the audio serials is similar to The Oprah Show and Oprah after the Show. Don’t get excited, though. No one gets any cars. The sibling duo have also created a sister video podcast called Rumor Girls Diaries, which, unlike Rumor Girls, is recorded with only a webcam, no director, and more alcohol consumption.

Karla and Karen are two fun-loving thirty-somethings who want to share that fun with the world. In one escapade, they celebrated Jay-Z’s condemnation of Cristal by drinking Colt 45 from martini glasses on lawn chairs in a parking lot in Maine, while they devote another episode, more typical

of the show’s style, to a grab bag of updates including Marie Claire’s then-new podcast, Portland’s overpriced standardized trash bags, wine-tasting vending machines, and American soldiers who post on the sisters’ MySpace page. Episodes, filmed on a single camera with a single shot, run anywhere from six minutes to a half hour and are regularly updated each week. Although popular with the locals and nominated for the Podcast Awards’ comedy honors, it’s basically an excuse for two sisters to catch up on each other’s lives and blog all at the same time. Their other, more personal video podcast, Rumor Girls Diaries, is a straightforward vlog that’s unscripted, undirected, and shot with a webcam, available both on the main Rumor Girls site, which provides updates on all of their audio and video podcasts, and on its own site.

One of their more entertaining bits was spun from a visit to their favorite hometown martini bar in Rumor Girls Episode #22, where they harassed the bartender into creating their own special cocktail, the X-Rated Rumor Martini, named after their radio show. It came with edible glitter. It’s impossible to summarize Rumor Girls any better than that.