PEARLS & AMBER

PIERCE BROSNAN SINGS

I loved MAMMA MIA, don't misunderstand.  I saw it at the end of a very long week, inhaling a bag of chocolate covered M&Ms, by myself, in a semi-full movie theater, in small town, USA.  I laughed, I cried--

I cringed.  Big time--

When darling Pierce, whom I love in everything, opened his mouth and sang.

Oh god.  Let me tell you, a gasp and twitter flew through the audience.  We had all chosen to hold our heads high and go to Mamma Mia instead of Dark Knight.  That takes guts.  There were even men in the audience...although maybe they were the ones who sniggered, then felt the elbow of their beloved in the closest rib.

Pierce Brosnan has a pleasant voice.  He'd do great at karaoke.  But on the full screen, warbling oh so earnestly those hilarious but wonderful Abba songs...no.  Maybe if he'd had a twinkle in his eye.  Maybe if we could see he was in on the joke--that he is no Harry Belafonte, or even Paul McCartney.

Pierce baby, we know you have guts.  You were Bond.  We know....

Next time you sing, however, laugh a little. 

Trust me. 

TRAFFIC SIGNS R ???

I was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there was this article offering the opinion that perhaps there are too many traffic signs in the USA today.   That Americans have become so programmed to look for traffic signs telling them what to do, that they...we...while driving, don't think for ourselves anymore.

For instance--the speed limit sign that makes no adjustments for if the weather changes.  There is, of course the ubiquitous "slippery when wet", but that sign isn't waving the alarm if one is on the freeway and it starts raining.

The article suggests that most people should know to slow down, but many are so used to the subliminal reminder that roads are indeed slippery when wet, that they no longer have the smarts to figure this out for themselves.  Hark to the truck driven by a madcap teenager roaring impatiently passed you in the pouring rain.

The article also mentions that we spend so much time looking for the signs, we don't pay proper attention to where we are going.  Like stop signs.  Where are they?  By the side of the road, often buried under trees or amidst other helpful signs like pedestrian crossing'.

How about four-way stops.  Why is ALL the traffic being stopped?  At least one of the roads could be allowed to keep moving.  But perhaps it's because we Americans sometimes just need to be halted, mid-road, to be reminded that there are other people on the road besides us?  I think this must be the answer. 

The reality is the the four-way stop is a game of nerves.  An illustration as to what kind of person you are--wimp, aggressive, the brainy kind who knows what the actual rule is--

I don't wait to see if the person on my right knows she got there before me, and therefore has the "right of way".  Because what if, in turn, the car on her right got there first?  Now what?  And this is assuming either of them actually knows.

And then there is always Sam Goody Shoes who pretends he's just being kind and is willing to wait his turn.  When the truth of it is he doesn't have a clue who is supposed to go first either.

Well, happy as I am for getting to stop at an intersection where there is no good reason for all of us to be sitting there at once, I know who goes first. 

Me.

Why?

Somebody's gotta do it.

 

WATERMELON FOR SEX

This is a large piece of watermelon.  It has just been given a new lease on life due to an unexpected burst of notoriety.

It's just had its five minutes of fame.  And here is the breaking news--

If you eat massive amounts of watermelon, your sex life will improve.  Your sex life will more than improve.  IT WILL SOAR!!! 

That was the news break.

So, have you run out and bought more watermelon, even though there is still that bowl of watermelon chunks sitting in the refrigerator from the week-end?

Well, don't.  Viagra works better, the breaking news went on to say, which is the fastest debunking in journalism since...well, I don't know, frankly. 

But so, such poor sports.  They couldn't let the world run for the watermelon for even one day.

As for women, it didn't specifically mention that watermelon would do anything at all for our sex lives.  Therefore, may I remind one of that old stand by, New Orleans and raw oysters.  So much more fun.  And most interersting to see if your man...er...rises to the occasion...by paying for the trip...which as all women know, goes so very far in making everything okay.

GORGEOUS GEESE

This is an Embden goose.

They are proud and upright geese.  They have snowy white feathers, therefore need plenty of swimming water to keep clean.  They make fabulous mothers, but as they are also excellent foragers, they tend to wander off if one doesn't keep an eye on them.  They are loud, which could be a problem, but as a result, they are also excellent burglar alarms.

This information is from my current new love, the wondrous magazine from England, Country Life.

I was scarfing up this article about geese, as if I might suddenly be inspired to install a gaggle out on the Southern Californian beach in front of my house.  It is an interesting notion.  I'm sure these geese would confound the adult neighbors, delight the neighbor children, and bring new life into the old bones of the neighbor dogs and cats, who haven't seen anything more exciting than a raccoon in a...coon's age.

Ahem.

These are Roman geese.  Roman geese are "sweet chubby little" geese.  I mean, isn't that description to die for?  They look the exact opposite of a hero, but it seems that heroes are exactly what they are because they were the geese who gave the alarm when Rome was attacked by the Gauls.  These geese adore slugs and snails (why don't we see more of these geese out in California, which as all gardeners know, is ruled by the snail/slug quandary).  It says that these geese make a good beginner's goose. 

I'm thinking maybe my new geese could sleep in the garage?  I've made room for my son's carpentry tools.  Surely these tools would be willing to share space with such diverse and adorable creatures.

Finally, these geese are the Steinbacher.  This striking bird (that's what the article said...'striking') comes in three versions--light blue, gray and lavender blue.  Apparently the lavender blue is to die for.  Anyway, the reader is encouraged to not be put off by these geese just because they used to be bred as fighting birds (why do people keep doing this?).  Apparently they actually have a calm temperament, and the fact they aren't shy around humans makes them an ideal pet...unless it's lots of eggs one is after.  These geese produce few eggs, even though, the article hastens to assure, they make excellent sitters and indeed, mothers.

I feel warm and fuzzy all over knowing that there are these geese out there.  I had no idea.  Hitherto, my only awareness of geese was that of geese formations, migrating.  Usually to Canada.

I feel sure these geese expect, and get, a more pampered lifestyle.

Which is as it should be.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

I know.  I know.  Warms the cockles of one's heart.

The FOURTH OF JULY.

I still grow misty at the memory of the 4th of July parades in Pittsfield, Massachusetts circa 1958.  To my nine year old eyes they were the best thing after Christmas morning.  The parades always ended with the firemen's muster.

One year, grown up now, and married, I went to the 4th of July parade in Milwaukee, which ended with the Coors Clydesdale team.  They were gorgeous.  Then we rode the train back to life in Chicago...which is an American tradition in itself...life in Chicago, I mean. 

One year, two babies in tow, I went to the 4th of July parade in Dundalk, MD...That day was a nightmare of two unhappy babies, so never mind about the parade in Dundalk-- 

History deserves to be preserved by these celebrations.  I do not disagree.

Anyway, 4th of July is all about parades.

And fireworks.

And barbecue and corn-on-the-cob and strawberry shortcake.

  Unless you live in Paris, where 4th of July is totally ignored, and all good Americans living there bow their heads in quiet relief, only to be brought up short by the mania of Bastille Day.

There was a time when two photographers, Mole and Thomas, made patriotic photos using thousands of men to create their 'living' tableaux.  They were originally made to honor the USA's involvement in WWl.  The one here used thirty thousand men.  From a seventy foot tower erected at Camp Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan, Arthur Mole stood, surveying the scene while his business partner, John D. Thomas, slowly moved the men into formation.

This picture is one of the largest the partners produced, measuring 748 by 580 feet.  Boggles the mind.

I am grateful for my country today.  No complaints today.  The sun is out.  I happen to be in the Midwest where 4th of July will feel very different from Southern California--

And it will feel the very same as well.

The plans include barbecue, and fireworks tonight.  How could they not.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, USA.

 

TELEVISION FOR GROWNUPS?

I read that tragedy has struck.  Really struck this time, not like all those other fluff times.  This time it is real.

In Hollywood, in prime time tv land, the latest statistics are in.

MORE PEOPLE OVER FORTY-FIVE are watching tv now than the old age group of eighteen to thirty year olds.

This spells the end of time.  Because, you see, there is no one in Hollywood, and I mean no one, who is over the age of thirty-nine working in television.

Who is going to write shows for this unfathomable age group.  Where'd they come from anyway?  How come they are suddenly hanging around the house watching prime time tv, instead of out doing something fun, like they used to.

This is all very depressing for the television people, I'm sure.

But, look on the positive side--

This could be an excellent opportunity for personal growth--

And an excellent opportunity in general for all those over fifty who used to write for television, and think they have the stamina to come back and do it all over again.

I'll be watching--

THE RITZ

Classy  Swank  Posh

Puttin on the ritz

The Ritz hotels--fabulousness personified.

RITZ, such a swell word, right?

Am I the last person in the world to know this word is actually a man's name?

As in M. Cesar Ritz.

He was a Swiss entrepreneur and hotelier who opened the first Ritz hotel in Paris in 1898, pioneering, in one fell swoop, luxury hoteliering.

Where has this information been all my life? 

I thought such a well-known word had been around a long time.  I could have sworn I saw 'ritzy' used in Macbeth.  Surely it got tossed off by Milton in Dantes' Inferno, because Dantes' inferno was the most fabulous one around.  Milton was just that kind of writer, given to exaggeration and too many adjectives and all.

Of course I then leapt to the conclusion that Mr. Ritz also created Ritz crackers.  But this was not the case.  They came about in 1934, long after Cesar had gone to his reward...which was in 1918.  They were however, named 'Ritz' to imply their fabulousness. 

It now occurs to me that there are actual people in this world named 'Ritz.'

"Hi, my name is Caleb Ritz, and I am everything my name implies."  Wow.  I mean, I wouldn't even have to do a Google search on him, or check his chart.

I love the word 'ritzy'.  It's a...happy word. 

Thank you Mr. Ritz, for leaving as your legacy those luxurious hotels, and as a result, one of the best adjectives in the English language.

BRIONI LOSES OUT TO FORD

Aahh well, times change.  Life marches on--

BRIONI has been axed, in favor of...TOM FORD--

For Bond's suits.  That's Bond, James Bond.  I knew you knew that.

I believe in life marching on, but only because I have no choice in the matter, so therefore I am almost at one with Brioni losing out to that perilous Tom Ford.

I remember him from his Gucci days.  I remember his scandalous exit, his brash foray into Hollywood.  I think no one told the worldly Ford that Hollywood is basically a one car town that brooks no new people, especially, god forbid, a fashion person who thinks he has more of a raison d'etre than donating free garments to red carpet moments.

My Brioni experience is personal.  My father bought a Brioni suit for my daughter's wedding.  He bought it because it was a pale green silk suit which was absolutely gorgeous, and it befitted the Grandfather  of the Bride.  He bought it without asking the price....

After shopping we set off for lunch.  It was there he thought to see how much he'd just spent at the very fashionable men's shop....

Since that moment he has thoroughly researched the reasons for the er...priciness of Brioni suits, and still will not allow the price to be discussed in polite company.

Sean Connery's Bond was dressed by Anthony Sinclair whose shop was on Conduit Street.  Anthony Sinclair is no longer with us, so he couldn't be reached for comment--

But all is well.  James Bond is in good hands.  The world is looking out for him, which is a good thing, because for him, our dear dear James, life doesn't march on.

Life, his very busy, very sexy life, continues on and on and on and on and on andonandonandonandon....

Which must certainly delight him, and most definitely delights everyone else.

ANCIENT ERA 'HAIR'?

Okay, so the review starts off saying...and I quote..."If you think of HAIR as that drippy hippie musical from an ancient era...."

Drippy hippie?

Ancient era?

I closed my mouth with effort.  I pulled my hand away from my heart.

I read the rest of the review.

Which did go on to praise a new re-staging of HAIR.  But again I took umbrage--

The review noted that the play is being done with an "explicitly antiwar agenda for an era that seems to demand one."

HAIR has always been an antiwar statement.  It was THE poster board for the antiwar peace movement in the sixties.  Okay?

I have heard that the Vietnam debacle is in the current textbooks.  So I like to assume those persons born sometime after 1973 are actually aware that there have been other wars fought besides the Iraqi war--

And that being anti-war isn't exactly cutting edge.

Ph.D IN SOCIAL SCIENCE OF FOOD

I never thought about getting a degree in Food when I was (morosely) considering college majors, way back, second half of last century (that would be 1968). 

Maybe there weren't degrees in Food?  I mean fun Food degrees.  Surely I would have noticed.  I do love food.

I guess there were serious Food degrees...but these I would definitely not have noticed.  Serious smacked of Science or Math degrees.  No more need be said on that matter.

Well, the latest Food degree, totally new and different and special and better than ever, and furthermore, the most comprehensive Food degree ever, gets its start this fall at the Indiana University in Bloomington...I  nearly wrote Bloomingdale's...I don't know...that word just seemed to want to slip out--

Never mind that--

I want to know why all the fun stuff like this degree is happening when it would so NOT be reasonable for me to drop my life and go back to school to pursue a degree, and not just any ole degree, but a Ph.D, mind you, in Food.  A Doctorate in the Social Science of Food.  These students will also be considered ' academic pioneers'.  The 'scope and breadth' of this program has never been done before--

I can't tell you how that pushes all my I WANT IT buttons.

They will be studying such interesting things as the history of chocolate, the diet of primates, what the study of bones and teeth reveal about ancient diets, the social and environmental causes of famine, followed by fair trade coffee, food and identity, cooking with herbs...I think I just made that one up.

"Hi, my name is Ruth and I am a Doctor of Food.  C'mon ask me, ask me anything about food and everything else, and I'll tell you."

  Maybe it's where I am in my life right now, but this seems like a perfectly sane, indeed soul-enhancing, way to spend the next five years of my life.

 

LAUGHING MATTERS

In Discover Magazine is a long, happy article about why laughter will survive into the future--

Because it's always been around forever, that's why...look to see what was around five thousand years ago, and you will be presented with what will survive into the far distant future.

I find this a worthy theory.  It fits my two plus two = four model.

What I find amusing is the seriousness with which such a subject is treated. "Dear writer/scientist, please come up with a 2500 word essay on the importance of laughter."

So the writer thinks wow.  A cinch.  I know laughter.  I like to laugh.  I think men and women look very pretty when they laugh, and as for babies?  Don't get me started on the adorableness of that.

So the writer sits down to toss off 2500 words on laughing his ass off-

And the world grows dark.  The world grows confused and very unfunny. The laptop stares back like a benign scorpion biding its time.

Maybe he should start by asking pertinent questions:  Cosmically, what is the meaning of laughter?  Personally, is there enough laughter in his own life?  Culturally, what makes people laugh, and why?

Quick trips to Wikipedia on 'humor' and Jerry Lewis movies, are made.  He gets sidetracked by the sad story of the Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin break up. 

He goes out to Starbucks, for those shots of caffeine and to talk to real live laughing specimens about laughter.  But no one is laughing that day.  The local basketball team is blowing the playoffs.  The writer becomes pissed off that these hulking steroid ridden monoliths, paid zillions, cannot manage to win a championship for the hometown.  So the writer grows bitter at the paltry fee he accepted to write this piece on the internationally acclaimed subject of laughter.

At home the spouse is just home from yoga, calm and serene, so she suggests he go smile at his own reflection in the mirror for some home grown happiness therapy, but when he does he sees just how old he has become, overnight, it would seem, and he grows still more melancholy.

Maybe he'll just call up his editor and renege on the deal.  He'll make a joke of it...but no.  If he does that then the editor will just be confused as to why he won't write 2500 teeny words on the vast, outlandishly complicated and totally unfunny subject of laughter--

The kitty comes in.  The writer hears him before he sees him.  In fact he smells the litter box before he sees his little kitty, and one more time wonders how such a little guy can create such an incredible stink doing his business.  And yet one more time he makes a mental note to call the vet to see if what they are feeding Kitty can be improved upon.

But little Kitty comes up to him and rubs his leg.  He tries to jump up on the computer but can't make it and falls back down like a feather.

Writer lurches to Kitty to see if he's all right--

And he sees this.

The light comes on.  The sound of laughter...his and Kitty's rises up out of the mists of angst--

The scorpion disappears and the laptop offers up THE perfect article.

MONGOL

A big, old fashioned movie.

After it was over we said "Hey, we just watched a movie spoken in Mongol, and didn't even notice."

After it was over we said, "Do we still want to do that horseback ride trek across Mongolia?"

When it was over he said "I didn't realize until the end this was about THE Genghis Khan."

I said "I thought his blood brother was fabulous." 

He said "I know they offered the trek this year, but I don't know about next year."

I said "I'll have to go home and look up Genghis Khan on Wikipedia."

He said "Even if they offer the trek next year, I might want Bali."

"I said, "You go to Bali.  I'll go to Paris.  We'll never have Mongolia."

But still, the wildness of the landscape, the fury of the Mongols, the running, fighting, the loyalty, the lack of loyalty--

The snow, the fur, the lightning, the cruelty, the honor, the respect, the massively empty landscape.

In the end, love conquered all, so that Genghis Khan could get on with the rest of his life.

I loved it.

SEX AND THE CITY

It was an important cultural event.  It was the most important cultural event for every woman in America.  Let's be honest here.

It was a cultural event that united the women of America like Hilary Clinton never did, and never could.

Although that's not really fair, is it?  As if politics could ever beat out movies.  As if pants suits could ever beat out wedding gowns.  As if political rallies could ever take the place of shopping.

It was early Friday morning, but not as early as 8:45 am, which was another time option.  I put on what could be described as a very fun outfit, in honor of the moment, and yes, went to see SEX AND THE CITY.

I laughed, I cried, I got out the Kleenex, I coveted the shoes, I coveted the wedding dresses, and yes, most of all I coveted that fabulous apartment Big bought Carrie.

I almost didn't notice the movie was two and a half hours long.  I did notice the story rambled, was mundane, and featured more moments of these friends crying and hugging each other than any other kind of moment...except for those painful moments when Big failed to look like he gave a damn about Carrie.

But the worst moment, the moment that should have caused heads to roll, should have ended up on the cutting room floor, was when Carrie finally gave her assistant, Louise, the thing she wanted more than anything else in the world, a Louis Vuitton bag.

It was the most hideous Louis Vuitton bag ever made.  I even doubt it was the real deal.  I was appalled.  I almost missed the next scene, I was so busy craning my neck to see if anyone else in the audience was having the same reaction.  I live in Orange County, CA.  The women in Orange County know their Louis Vuitton.  But no.  My fellow audience members were licking their lips, and sighing and crying along with Louise and her new (god awful) Vuitton.

Okay, so it would have been a fun moment if Louise had thrown the bag back at Carrie, but, instead, she cried.  So did Carrie, I think.  Or maybe it was me, for all the wrong reasons.

But the movie had all the right reasons going on in it.  It was a fun, fantasy land of a movie, in which everyone, and I do mean everyone, ended up getting the biggest dream they ever wanted-- 

TRUE LOVE.

Yummy.

SOCCER COMES TO ART BASEL

Oh my god.  I feel the art patron's pain.

The soccer fans?  HUH?  WHADDYA SAY?  CAN'T HEAR YA-

Once a year the world's most prestigious contemporary art fair takes place in Basel, Switzerland.  I nearly had to go to eighth grade in Basel, Switzerland, so I happen to have heard of Basel.  Don't you go worrying yourself to death if you haven't.

Because the wealthiest art patrons have heard of Basel, Switzerland, and every year they positively drool at the mouth at the thought of their blissful week buying gorgeous art and looking gorgeous and feeling gorgeous and speaking in any language that might show up.  It's a very good time for wealthy art patrons. 

Until this year.

This year the Euro Cup's playoffs are being played in, yes, Basel, Switzerland, and yes, right during Art Basel week.  This is not a good thing...for the art patrons.

There will 55,000 art patrons, wearing handsome clothes and delicate psyches.  There will be 160,000 insane, rabble rousing soccer fans thinking they own the place.

Can you see it? 

I can.  Last year I was in Paris when the final rugby playoffs were occurring.  It was terribly terribly awful.  All those drunk maniacs pushing their way into my nice genteel little tourist life there in the City of Lights.  They took over the metros.  They camped on the bridges.  They traveled in large packs shouting in the streets until all hours, I tell you.  It was ghastly.  The only time it was quiet was in the morning when the rugby fans were too hungover to move.  Then the place, and I'm referring to the Left Bank, amidst all those art galleries and Dior stores and such, stank of beer and...well, never mind...except to say the dogs, even tethered to their Parisian leashes, LOVED it.

Insanely rich art patrons are feral people too, of course.  But at least they are quiet about it.  They don't take over the metro.  And, when passed out finally, they are extracted from the gold ice bucket, driven back to their hotel where they are dumped quietly into their beds, by the chauffeur.  What's not to prefer.

Sports fanatics.  Art snobs.  Together at last.   

One of each milieu will meet, one drunk on good beer, the other on good champagne.  They will fall in love, one wearing their race hat and soccer shoes, the other clad in minimal Jill Sanders.  And they will live happily ever after--

In Basel, Switzerland, that wondrous place that threw these two unlikely souls together, and said--

See?  It's all good.

GORE DOES OPERA

I just knew he could do it.  I knew he had it in him.

Not only, in the jaws of defeat, did he write a best selling book, but he sings too.

Not only did he win a Nobel Peace Prize, but yes, it turns out he sings too.

Not only did he go to Hollywood and win an Academy Award, gosh darn it, the guy SINGS.

Al Gore has exacted a mythical revenge.  What's not to love!

Now he gets, one more time, to bring the world to his knee, begging to shower him with another prize, by virtue of that unassailable art form, opera.

It will be an actual Italian composing the opera, but you know that Gore will be consulted every step of the way.

He wants to sing.  I just know it.  Why else would he have said yes?   

Al Gore up on the stage, his new(ish) girth just so right for the medium, belting out operatic bellows of heartfelt, indeed stricken, odes to arias and Green--

Why not.

Because it is only right that handsome Al should get to show the world, one more time, you can't keep a good man down.

WHISKERED AUKLET WHISKERS TAPED

Straight out of the pages of the Smithsonian!

One day, while questioning the usual direction of scientific thought on this subject--that head feathers on birds were just there for good looks, scientists decided to experiment.  And they found out something absolutely earth shattering.

They found out that when they taped down the whiskered auklets head feathers, and put them in a dark maze "designed to mimic the rock crevices where they nest", why, guess what happened?

The birds with their head feathers taped down BANGED into the rocks THREE TIMES MORE OFTEN than did the whiskered auklets whose head feather had been left the hell alone.

So the scientists published this incredible finding--that the whiskered auklets used their head feathers for something more than just looking good.  Then I guess they went home and got a good night's sleep for the first time since they'd thought to wonder about all this.

So I picture the same scenario using...us.  Humans.

One day some giants from far distant galaxies came down to observe humans.  Getting real close to the little creatures, they noted the humans seemed to need to use both their legs to move about. 

The giants didn't have anything else more pressing on their minds that day, so they decided to experiment.  A harmless little experiment.  The little human creatures things wouldn't be hurt or maimed in the process.

They tied up one of the legs.  The humans seemed to struggled when grabbed and held still so the one leg could be tied up, but since they weren't being hurt, it was okay...because what's wrong with a little fear anyway?

Then they set the now one legged human being down, and, standing ready with yellow legal pads to take notes, they commenced to observe what happened.

And what they found out was that humans with one leg tied up BANGED down to the ground THREE TIMES MORE OFTEN than those humans who got to use both legs.

I bet your three year old could have told you that blindfolded, but some scientists just don't seem believe in little things like intuition, gut instinct, two plus two equals four.

I can only assume that these scientists were experimented on in another life, and it is pay back time now.

RATTY NAILS R IN

I read it in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times, so they must know, right?

I read that mangled manicures are A OKAY out in the world of fashionable young women.  I guess even fashionable older women too, if they (we) can actually bring ourselves to exist in such a state.

What this means to the layman is one's nailpolish can begin to rip off, crack off, come unglued, look like the moths got to it, and this is the height of NOW.  This is to die for nails. 

One can even, we are assured, apply for jobs with ratty nails.  These days people doing the hiring simply understand the young women sitting before them, in earnest (I would assume) search for a job, not bothering to hide their neglected nails inside a pair of little white gloves, are in touch with the absolute latest way to wear a manicure.  Some big jewelry stores, see, have actually hired such rabid looking hands to show their jewelry--

I don't think I'd buy a fifteen thousand dollar ring from a kid whose manicure is passed it's due date.  I'd find myself sneaking a look at the state of her hair, her teeth, her...never mind.

I think it is one more way chronically dirty people, the kind who think dirt under the fingernails (and here I leave out gardeners.  Their dirty, ragged fingernails are just too sweet for words, smelling like roses and weeds and specially mixed potting soil and all) somehow shows they are but free spirits, dis-interested in the things that don't count...like perfectly manicured nails.

Why, then, did they do their nails in the first place?  That's what I want to know.  It used to be a neat trick to get oneself to stop chomping on one's nails, because we were always in search of perfect hands, which used to mean...you know, long nails coated with pink, silver, raspberry or pearl white.   

Have the manufacturers of nail polish heard about this?  Are they worried?

Hey, maybe this is a trick to bully nail salons to keep their prices down.  No longer needing to maintain the manicure means less trips to the salon--

Wait a minute...maybe I don't have to fret about this. 

AKIMBO

It's a fabulous word, I think, the word 'AKIMBO'.

I thought it meant exactly what is shown in the picture here--flailing legs and arms.

I even used it recently, with just that effect in mind.  I used it in print.

Now what do I do?  Correct it before it's too late?  I don't think I can.

This photo of the woman demonstrates what 'akimbo' actually means--hands on waist, elbows jutting out.

I thought this stance meant "Come here right now, young man, before I have to come and get you."

Or "You really expect me to believe that?"

Or "If you think I'm going to believe that, then you have another think coming, mister."

Minus the smile.  This woman is smiling merely because she is demonstrating, as opposed to actually being in, the state of 'akimbo'.

Frankly, I am disappointed that such an active word as 'akimbo', so musically twirling and odd, what with that 'k' and the last letters being a 'b' and an 'o', is the word for this rigid stance.

But maybe I'm just embarrassed for having used it incorrectly all these years.  Like how, it turns out, I've also been mispronouncing the word 'debacle'--

I had no idea the accent was on the second syllable until my son corrected me.  I thought it was on the first syllable.  I was so sure he was wrong, my son got up from the (until then) congenial meal we were having, found the dictionary, and without further ado, proved he was right.

I would have choked on the twice-baked potatoes except we were having chicken tacos. 

MY FIRST ICEBERG

So, today, I read someone proclaiming "You never forget your first iceberg."

I had no idea it was that common of an experience...akin to "You never forget your first kiss." 

Kisses are pretty easy to come by, but  icebergs?  There aren't any icebergs around where I live.  It would take $10,000 and a twenty hour flight (not to mention the hours spent inside airports) to get to my first iceberg.

So, this is the trouble.  I haven't seen my first iceberg yet, and this, it turns out, is like being a virgin long passed when the event should have occurred--

I am consumed with dismay. 

I was even in Alaska once, visiting a BFF, and she, it turns out, let me down.  She did not drag me to see my first iceberg.  She did not insist she wanted to see my face when I saw my first iceberg.  She obviously didn't give a rat's ass if I saw an iceberg or not. 

I've seen ice cubes. 

I've seen snowflakes in my eyelashes.

I've seen ice skating rinks.

I've seen snow drifts after blizzards--

I'VE BEEN AROUND, okay?

But, I haven't seen my first iceberg, and I don't think, I'll ever see my first iceberg.

So that at the next party I go to, when the conversation inevitably turns to everyone's else's first iceberg, I will have to remain silent.  I will not be able to partake in the conversation.  I will not be able to brag about MY FIRST ICEBERG--

...unless...I lie.

 

BATHTUB IN THE BEDROOM

Today reading the now defunct House and Garden, once again I saw a beautiful ad featuring a cool, chic, super sensual bedroom...with bathtub in it.

Not to my taste at all. 

First there's that lack of...a certain solitude.  How can I light my candles and make sand castles with the soap bubbles if he is over there, reading in bed.  What if he's the kind of reader who reads to you, companionably, of course, every last thing he finds interesting.  Which would be the whole book, magazine or cartoon strip, because since he's reading it, he must find it enthralling, right?

What about the humidity?  Aren't bathrooms by nature, damp little entities?  Awash with the scents of soap, shampoo, shaving cream, perfume, aftershave, and toothpaste?  Aren't towels always not quite dry?  Don't washcloths collect mildew like stamp collectors collect stamps?

What about splashes.  Aren't we risking water damage to the new wood floors, or the white shag carpet, or even the cold bathroom tiles surrounding the tub--

Which would, to my mind, detract from the overall ambiance of the rest of the floor, because certainly one wouldn't have bathroom tile floors in one's very own bedroom, would one?  

Especially not that certain someone who, once upon a time, thought of the bathtub in the bedroom, within whistling distance of the bed, once upon a time that person thought it was one hell of a romantic gesture.

And certainly, although he/she is most certainly living to rue the day the tub came anywhere near the comforter, he/she cannot be faulted.

Because all the world loves a romantic.