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A former housemaster of Uppingham School is quoted as saying that a 16-year-old gave him an Omega Watch and a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon. The headteacher of Annemount prep in Hampstead Garden Suburb noted that this year’s haul had included Selfridges vouchers, caviar and vodka.

There were no reports about what teachers at the very top schools, such as Eton, received this year — presumably because they were busy whizzing downhill in Klosters in a scree of powdery snow, screaming: “I can’t believe this is all free! Thank you, Fig-Stotton Minor!” at the time.

— The Times Online

Hmmm. My teachers always seemed content with the Holly Hobby coffee mugs my mom sent in (which, frankly, I found a tad lavish). You think maybe they were just humoring me?

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Nearly two decades ago, in a tiny town in middle-of-nowhere Mississippi, I packed all of my worldly possessions into a then-new Mustang, backed down a driveway buckling in the August heat, and left.

Lots of people who’ve done such things–who’ve left behind lives and families in Middle America to pursue careers or education or dreams in cities across the nation–will try to convince you that they’d give up everything to return to their roots. They’ll be tossing back an $18-a-glass Beaujolais, waiting for their edamame to cool, and then bust out with statements like, “Hell yeah, I’m just a country boy at heart!”

Ladies and gentlemen, those words will never cross my lips.

I mean, sure: I spent a good chunk of my childhood fishing and running through woods and planting vegetable gardens, and I look back fondly on all that, but I’m pretty good and distinguishing between nostalgia and straight-up yearning. I wax nostalgic when I remember riding four-wheelers for hours in the cold, then shuffling into my grandmother’s house and smelling her incomparable blueberry cobbler, fresh from the oven; I yearn for a personal assistant who can draft a decent thank-you letter and for a computer that doesn’t groan every time I try to run InDesign and Photoshop at the same time. Which basically means I understand that my hometown is a great place to visit, but until they 86 the fagbashing and build a good Thai restaurant, I wouldn’t want to live there. Again.

All of this was thrown into sharp relief two days ago when I walked into my daddy’s house and the first thing he said to me was, “We’re gonna have to wait dinner on your brothers. They went up to the farm for some deer hunting and probably won’t be back for another hour or so. I got some ambrosia in the fridge if you’re hungry, though.” It all sounded so completely foreign to me–but not in an attractive, exotic way. Just foreign. Like, “Oh, yeah, that’s what it’s like here.” Later, I tried to have extended conversations with my family without bringing up politics, religion, or social issues, which basically left us with cars, golf, and my estranged mother (who merits a post of her own). I’ve never been so happy to see my grumpy boyfriend or my incontinent dogs as I was when I returned last night.

So, yeah, I freely admit that I’ve lost touch with Middle America. But then, they’ve lost touch with me, too, so I’m not taking all the blame.

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As a footnote to the boyfriend’s recent post about Tokyo-based entrepreneurs who rent high-end [ba-dum-bum!] sex dolls to company men looking to blow off some steam after the 16-hour workday, here’s a bit from the ever-popular Wai-Wai section of Mainichi Daily News:

Several companies are involved in the bustling trade supplying customers looking to slip it into some silicon, with lifelike figurines that set back buyers something in the vicinity of 600,000 yen as opposed to the simple, blow-up types with the permanently open mouths that can be bought from vending machines for a few thousand yen [emphasis, like, totally mine].

Excuse me? I mean, I knew about the various automats for eggs, beer, rice, toilet paper, and porn, but love dolls, too? Is nothing sacred?

Suddenly Mississippi–where I’m heading today for a pre-holiday dinner with the family–doesn’t seem so odd.

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So, around 4:00 this morning I found myself in an emergency room in the Bronx, surrounded by skateboarding orderlies and holiday shoppers in Christmas sweaters. Things didn’t get officially weird, though, until Janet Jackson walked in, sporting that cheap-looking, malfunctional PVC Superbowl getup and pushing someone in a wheelchair that looked suspiciously like Mahatma Gandhi. Ms. Jackson (as I call her because I, of course, am nasty), leaned over her patient and gave me a creeptacular Cheshire grin, causing every wrinkle in her prematurely aged body to stand out like pleats in a Balenciaga ruched silk ball gown, only not as pretty. It was shocking, awesome, and inspiring–well, in that it inspired a petit haiku:


Lips like fat earthworms,

Sharp Chicklet teeth and lifeless brow:

Bitch has had work done

That’s the last time I down a family-size bag of Zapp’s and a six pack right before bed.

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Okay, as per your suggestions, I’m starting my epistolary novel. Here’s chapter one:

Dear Fairy Godmother,

I’m sorry to bother you and all, but, like, some serious shit’s gone down in the past couple of months, and I’m gonna be busting some heads if things don’t change soon.

See, mom had this thing she was complaining about. We all thought it was just her herpes acting up, but really, it was cancer. I won’t bore you with all the details, but, long story short, she died, and at the funeral, dad hooked up with this bimbo he’d hired to be a mourner, and now she’s moved in. I’m not sure if they’re actually married or anything–I mean, there was never a wedding, so far as I know–but now the bitch is living here with her two squealing tweenage daughters, and I can’t talk on the phone or get any sleep because their door is always open and they’re listening to Disney radio at, like three bajillion decibels or something.

Still, everything was kinda fine until last night. It was a Friday, so, you know, I invited over Kevin to watch some movies and maybe a beheading or two. Nothing big. Anyway, we’d just finished watching that Princess Diaries thing when Kevin started feeling me up–which is fine, ’cause, I mean, we’ve gone all the way to third, so a little breast jiggle is no great shakes.

About that time, Poppy and Pansy (my stepsisters are fucking twins, if you can believe that) jumped out from under the bed, screaming and yelling and making faces. Well, I was all like crouching tiger and shit, ready to go ballistic on their skinny asses, but Kevin got all freaked and–get this–he jumped out the window! I don’t know if you remember my room, FG, but I’m on the third floor, and there ain’t nothing below me but moat and crocodiles. So needless to say, I’m out one very foxy, hung boyfriend–all on account of the goddamn Herbalife twins!

So you see, you gotta help me. Get me out of here. Take me to Tahiti or Siberia or wherever it is you live–it has to be better than this. Or if that’s too much trouble, just kill the twins. And make sure to shrivel stepmom’s ovaries: she and dad are so busy boinking in every freaking corner of the castle, it’ll be just my luck that she’ll drop triplets nine months from now.

Please help me, Fairy Godmother. You’re my only hope.

Love always,
Snatcherella

P.S. I know where you live, bitch.

I think it’s a little over the top myself, but the editors over at Pengiun, that’s how they like ’em these days….

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Five things I’m so totally not thinking about this a-to-the-m:

1. Does black belt-wielding, former CNN temptress Lynne Russell really need to hawk lipstick and blush to make ends meet?

2. What am I supposed to wear under this kilt?

3. Does Britney really have a prerogative?

4. If I were a wombat, what species of wombat would I be?

5. Should I follow through on my plan to single-handedly revive the epistolary novel as a vital, relevant literary form, or should I just stick to haiku?

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So, I have this eating problem. Well, maybe “problem” is too strong a word; let’s just call it an “issue.”

Up until about 7th grade, I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and as much as I wanted. Then I started playing tennis and swimming and noticing Calvin Klein’s new breed of overtly sexualized male models, and things changed. I noticed that, unlike such models, my stomach was kinda flabby. In fact, when I put on my shorts, little ridges of skin rolled over the waistband. My chest and arms were nothing to write home about, either. So I started dieting.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really understand the basics of nutrition. Hell, where I grew up, no one did–least of all my mother, whose idea of fixing dinner was ordering pizza and cracking open a tub of ice cream. Not surprisingly, my version of dieting became the classic Tab-and-a-Snickers-bar routine. I’d starve myself half to death, then play tennis for four or five hours under the brutal Mississippi sun; afterward, if I hadn’t passed out, I’d gorge myself on whatever was in the fridge when I got home (usually leftover pizza and more ice cream). I was a mess.

Decades later, my eating habits are still awful. Most irritating–especially to the boyfriend–is my tendency to gorge before parties so that I won’t look like a total pig in public. Jonno says it’s unforgivably rude and really unhealthy, but I can’t help myself. I’m turning into one of those little old society ladies that John Currin used to paint: neurotic and obsessive, with a stash of Twinkies in the butler’s pantry. Only difference is, I’m rounder and not as wealthy.

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Unrelated Dispatches from Tehran

Funny, this didn’t make the New York Times:

A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys to form his image has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests over freedom of expression.

—Tehran Times

But then, neither did this:

An official said the Iranian tourism industry suffers from lack of publicity and called for advertising Iran’s tourist attractions worldwide.

…

The official pointed out that according to a World Trade Organization report, mistreatment of foreign tourists has been acknowledged by 70 to 80 people whereas satisfactory treatment of tourists is only endorsed by 10 people.

—Iran Daily

Perhaps said official should be less concerned with advertising than with entertaining the handful of tourists he’s got. Put the fatwahs and the genital mutilations on the DL, ixnay the public stonings, and then worry about building display ads for Conde Nast Traveler.

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Maybe I watch too much web porn. Maybe I read too many t-shirts. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve just got a dirty mind. But the first time I saw the ads for the Dellf campaign, I thought to myself, “What the hell is going on here? Folks complain about Nicolette Sheridan and Terrell Owens’ tongue-in-cheek hijinks, but no one raises an eyebrow over ‘Dellf’?”

Then, of course, I realized not everyone thinks like I do. Maybe no one else understands that “Dellf” is merely an acronym for “Dudes Enjoy Lucy Liu’s Fuzzbox.” Or possibly “Dame Edna Likes Lanky Footballers.” Or, in some quarters, “Dames Emmanuel Lewis Lately Felched.” The boyfriend thinks I’m making too much of this and assures me that it really stands for “Doctorow, E. L., Liberates Ferrets,” but I think he just made that up.