Friday, October 06, 2006

The King

Jim The Small Child Nephew was watching SportsCenter with Country The Brother In Law, and one of the anchors--as O Those Witty Anchors only can--referred to LeBron James as "King James."

This was Jim's cue to glance up at the screen, and, since excessively German two-year-olds are easily confused with 6-8 black basketball players, he announced: "That's me!"

We are alternately impressed that he's self-identifying and terrified that he's coronated himself a promotion from The Prince, a title that Will The Baby Nephew now inherits. I shall see to it that the palace staff is notified.

just another humble servant at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Thursday, October 05, 2006

If You're In Town

Today I informed my students that I was once again leaving town.

One raised his hand. "Are you going back to France?"

"No, but I am leaving the country."

"Where are you going?"

"Manhattan."

Random House has arranged for us a reading for the Formerly SuperSecretDoubleProbation Project. It's on Tuesday, October 10, at 7 PM. Location: KGB Bar. Because religious oppression and gulags are just so adorable, they easily translate to a theme bar. Opening soon down the street: The SS Lounge!

I get three minutes to boil down a 5000-word essay. I have an additional disadvantage by having a longer name that most of the other authors. People with an articulated middle name should get an extra four seconds.

We were given the reading order today, and I am... dead last. This either means I'm the big shebang finish, or, more likely, the publicists wanted to wait until potential customers are drunk as possible to introduce me.

I'll need someone to hold my purse at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

L'eau

I would like you to meet the bathroom of the corporate hotel in Monte Carlo.

It was truly a bathroom to cross an ocean for, quite easily larger and with better electronic equipment than my entire apartment (it had a flat screen TV. In the bathroom.) The Hotel de Paris is serious about ensuring that even the turds of its guests enjoy a luxurious existence.

This, for instance, is the floor:

Marble tile. Okay? In a mosaic. On the floor of the bathroom.

See also my feet in their momentarily complimentary slippers, which I found awesome until it turned out that if you took them home, the hotel would charge you like eighteen trillion dollars. Suddenly they weren't so fluffy.

Here is a wide angle view of the entire room. I couldn't quite get the polo pony, the Olympic swimming lane, and the Ferris wheel in the frame:

What's behind the frosted door, you ask? Well! This:

Now, I'm a very sophisticated lady, so I knew what this was. It was a friend for the toilet, which was facing directly opposite. I thought this tremendously thoughtful of Monaco, to give my toilet a friend there in that enormous bathroom where it would otherwise be very lonely. So I turned on the tap full force, just to see what would happen, and what happened was an enormous fountain of water that indeed arced directly into the toilet. I watched in fascination for a while, then shut it off, because there was no music to go with the water show, as there is at EPCOT. Still! A water show, in my very own bathroom! I didn't even have change from my nasty airplane clothes. Euros well spent, Sponsoring Company. Euros well spent.

you haven't lived until you've seen The Simpsons, in French, in the bathroom at: mb@blondechampange.com

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Departures

The EPCOT Food and Wine Festival began this weekend, and so I must pause and pay hail to the mighty Flipper, gone from The Swamp but forever remembered as fellow explorer of the Worst. Downtown. Ever.

Of the four of us who met as Mondavi educators--G-Force and Oogie are the other two--Flipper is the first to depart the scene of the wine. She has returned to her ancestral home of Dayton. So we celebrated by cramming small boxes of candy cigarettes into our racks and ordering drinks the color of traffic cones. Flipper is that kind of friend.

As we can see in the photo evidence at right, the tradition continued right up until our final evening out together. Note the beer-holding frateous touristus, male of a species indigenous to Florida. This picture was taken perhaps four seconds after he said the following:

"Are you a lucky charm? Because you look magically delicious."

Also depicted here in Oogie, bearing the Official Expression of WTF.

Flipper and I will remain friends, of course, but one cannot replace on the phone what has been hard-won in many, many hours of live Star Wars viewing and hair fluffing. I have lost count of the times we have visited the ladies room together. Women are physically unable to bond otherwise.

We have all moved on to other jobs, larger apartments, but it requires a special bond to be able to take in an entire bar at a glance and pinpoint the exact moment at which you will begin to look approachable to the guy in the corner currently in deep conversation with his shot glass.

The two of us were one another's weekend dates for three years; the combined total of losers left in our Margaritaville wake could re-take Yorktown. I don't think she liked me when we first met; she says I rather frightened her. So you see, Flipper is to be commended for her utterly spot-on character judging.

This is the type of relationship I never thought I would have. It took until I was a decade out of college, but I finally found the friend I needed in high school.

Hug one another, ye women, for the bond of lip gloss and enormous earrings is one not to be mocked.

Warm waters, dear Flipper, and may the men of sideways sunvisors dance far, far away from you. I'll see you at the next fermentation and harvest.

estrogen special at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Also

Can somebody please tell me what's not going on at Penn State on a Saturday night to the point where three hundred people are turned away at a Dave Coulier appearance?

Monday, October 02, 2006

Meeting

Meet Me In St. Louis is showing right now on TCM, and I think the last time I saw it I was eleven years old and lying on the couch, either sick or pretending to be so. I do believe my adoration of sparkly head things came from Judy Garland's World's Most Beautiful Scarf in the "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" scene. Drop the sideways-through-the-door puffy sleeves and she's also wearing the World's Most Beautiful Dance Dress. She has earned this dress, after an enduring entire movie adorned primarily by various forms of whorehouse draperies. Because Hollywood knows that when people want glamour, they think: "Pom poms."

I can't remember the names of any of the students I've been staring at for eight weeks, but the entire orchestration for "Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolly," that I know by heart.

til the end of the line at: mb@blondechampagne.com

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