PEARLS & AMBER

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.