Charles Town

After Savannah, we went to Charleston, SC, where my mom used to live, and where our ancestors supposedly (with a big emphasis on "supposedly") came to the city the year John Locke wrote the Charles Town charter for the eponymous Charles II, who was of course namesake of the King Charles Spaniel.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure if we're decended from the Founders of Charleston or not. My relatives, like all good Southerners, are inclined to "exaggerate," which is kind of like lying, only ... okay, it's exactly like lying. But the theory is that if enough people believe something, it is somehow converted into truth. They belive that fiction - even more than the truth - is a deeply sacred thing. Every Southern family has a James Frey-type memory, the kind that probably wouldn't stand up to a team of editorial fact checkers. But fortunately, nobody ever bothers. They know, like all good storytellers, that fiction usually makes for a much better narrative than literal history, which is mostly full of Stamp Acts and heated disagreements over bond issue referendum (whatever that means).

Kind of like how Faulkner said that his characters were more real to him than his own daughter. Which is a pretty harsh message to send to his daughter. "Yes, dear, you're much less real to me than an imaginary retarded kid who's in love with a cow." If I remember correctly, she committed suicide at a young age. But I digress. Which is another unfortunate side-effect of Southern-ness, which is also sometimes referred to as "ADD".

My grandmother and her sister always insisted that we were descended from raow-uhlty (or, royalty, to those who don't call it the "War of Northern Aggression"), but I'm not sure of any empirical evidence that backs that up. All proper Southern ladies are convinced they are decended from royalty. I've never understood that. If they were so royal back in Scotland or France or wherever they came from, I can't imagine they would have been very anxious to give up their castles and servant wenches and velvet clothing for the glories of rice farming in a dangerous, mosquito-filled country loosely founded upon anti-royal sentiments. No. If you were royal - unless you were crazy (not ruling that out) - you would probably want to stay in a designated royal place, and oppress people, or collect Welsh Korgis, or carry on affairs with horsey-looking women, or whatever it is that royals do.

But anyway. Here are some pictures of Charleston. Let's just assume my ancestors lived in these main-shuns (that is: mansions; they weren't speaking Chinese, I'm just not good at writing dialects), sitting on a wide porch drinking mint juleps with Elvis and General Lee (that is, Robert E., not the flying car from The Dukes of Hazard), playing chess with their well-compensated servants of African descent who were really very glad to be there, and not oppressed in any way. After all, if you don't know the truth, anything could be true.

Just in case anybody's actually reading this, or for the person who stumbles across it accidentally while searching for "SORORITY GIRLS + MATURE BILLY GOATS!!!" (which, until just now, that would have been highly unlikely), here are some photos to follow up my recent post about Savannah.

Above: A park in Savannah.

LEFT: A savannah. In Savannah. If only there were a woman named Savannah in the picture, it could be a triple entendre. Or somehting.

Adventures in Ye Olde South Land, Inc.

Last week, I went with my mom on a trip to our ancestral homeland. No, not Scotland or France or England. I'm talking about South Carolina. And Georgia.

First, we went to Savannah, which is probably the most beautiful small city (or is it a large town?) in America. Savannah was built around 27 small parks, after a trend in Paris in the early 19th Century. The parks and the trees and the flowers are effortlessly beautiful, dripping with Spanish moss and recalling a simpler time - that is, a time before all of the actual residents fled to the outskirts of town. Unlike the typical "urban flight" syndrome, they didn't leave because the neighborhood was getting bad. Most of them had to leave because the area was slowly being sucked into a Pottery Barn catalog, like in some twisted, Yuppie version of The Twilight Zone.

Savannah has changed a lot over the past 15 years, or however long it's been since "that Yankee wrote that book" (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) about the place. These days, visiting Savannah is a bit like going to "Ye Olde South Land" at Epcot center. It even seems as if strategically placed locals are on the payroll of some undercover theme park. You expect to see them wearing name tags, like: Crazy Civil War Reenactment Dude, or Toothless Old Man Selling Boiled Peanuts Out of an Unhygenic Truck.

These days, downtown Savannah, except for the area around Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), feels eerily empty, as if the ghosts they love to go on & on about had recently pulled up and moved to darker, less well-appointed haunts. Most of the people on the streets are tourists - mostly from Southern states, but with a generous sprinkling of Yankees and Asians and Australian backpackers (Australian packpackers are everywhere; if mankind ever manages to travel to other planets, I'm pretty sure we'll be greeted by Australian backpackers).

The streets around the park squares are fairly quiet, except for the fleet of trolly buses with the muffled voices of tour guides going on & on about what everything used to be. The big old houses in the historic district have been sold for a mint. A lot of these have been sold to foreigners (people from Japan, or, say, New York). On the whole, they seem to be uninhabited except by contractors involved in interminable plumbing and heating projects. Some are museums of one sort or another, or maybe the hobby- the life-size dollhouses - of people who live far away but who watched the Patrick Swayze mini-series "North and South" at a particularly vulnerable age.

Still, many parts of Savannah are so beautiful it hurts your eyes. Maybe it's just because it reminds me of driving through on car trips as a kid, or because 10 generations of my ancestors are buried up and down the banks of the Savannah river. Or maybe because it represents the good parts of the South with relatively few of the bad. For instance, when integration came in the '60s, Savannah was one of the few cities, including Northern cities, where there were no riots, no protests whatsoever. On the whole, people were glad. There were plenty of Southerners who were, but they don't get much press. Granted, they weren't the majority. But if we're to believe 99.9% of all media portrayals, virtually all white Southern people are:
a) profoundly stupid b) evil c) poor, and d) extremely fond of ironic t-shirts (e.g., the 450-pound dude at KFC with an ill-fitting t-shirt that reads, If you're rich, I'm single!).

When I was a little girl (specifically, about 20 years ago), I remember Savannah being a lot seedier. But then again, everywhere was. Sigh. I miss seediness. It's becoming illegal in the United States of America, Inc.

The problem with both Savannah and Charleston (the old parts, at least) is that these cities have become the victim of their own success. They've become reconstructed and refurbished and whitewashed to the point that they're just these rarified monuments, rather than just a place where people live. It becomes a more self-conscious Historical City -pretending to be something that was already a dream within a dream within a dream. Within a Patrick Swayze mini-series. Or something.

My dad picks me up at the airport on Friday. He has a new car with one of those GPS route trackers in it.

He presses a button, and a robotic woman's voice starts talking in French. Apres 2 kilometres, veuillez tourner ... a gauche.

"See!" Dad says, very proud of this discovery. " It tells me the directions ... in French!"

I hesitate to point out that Dad doesn't ... speak French.

"Of course, it can also tell you the route in English -- and several other languages." He presses a button. The same voice intones, "In one ... mile ...turn ...left." It's a woman's voice, but the phrasing is very Captain Kirk. In fact, I wish they'd gotten William Shatner to do the voice over for this device. I'm sure he could have broken away from the Priceline commercials for an hour or two.

"For the love of God, man ... Turn ... left in 1.2 miles!"

This tracking system, which seems to involve enough technology to launch a rocket to Mars, might be very helpful if Dad ever went anywhere in the car that he hasn't been driving to for at least 35 years. But I don't want to burst his bubble.

For that matter, I'm not sure why my dad needs to have an SUV. It's not like he has 5 kids, or needs to haul a boat, or drives up to the top of an off-road mountain peak to have a ram, or some other horned animal, gaze admiringly at his 4-wheel drive.

"It's good for when I, uh, you know, go fishing," Dad asserts. To his credit, my dad and his friends do go fishing about once a year, often in Alabama or Colorado or one of these places. I don't bring up the fact that he usually flies to the destination and then rents a car (undoubtedly some non-SUV). He doesn't even own a fishing pole, because it's easier and probably cheaper to just rent the stuff once a year.

My parents do have the suburban habit of buying everything in bulk, so the SUV does come in handy for that. In the garage, we have cases upon cases of random household supplies. It's as if they're preparing for some international toilet paper shortage. And we have enough mayonnaise to survive a nuclear apocalypse. Which is interesting, because one jar of mayonaise tends to last my folks for at least one presidential administration. Sometimes two.

The idea of buying in bulk is utterly foreign to most of us who live in New York City, where every item really has to justify taking up space. "Hmmm ... the urn with grandma's remains? Well, it is taking up 6 inches, and seeing as how we're paying $10 a month per square foot, well ..."

I'm joking, of course. Most people in Manhattan pay much more than $10 a square foot.

Wouldn't it be funny, albeit not "ha-ha" funny, if a third world war erupted over some Danish political cartoons? First, this would be difficult to explain to most Americans, who would wonder why anyone would be so upset about people defaming a pastry. Then we would have to explain that "Danish" is also a word that refers to the people of a nation located in Amsterdam, somewhere between a donut and a cinnamon roll.

I don't know if anyone's been following the recently-erupted scandal over the cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed that were published, back in September, in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Both Saudi Arabia and Libya have recalled their ambassodors to Denmark, and violent protests have erupted in front of the Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

Just as an FYI to the protesters: the people who work in the Danish embassies are not cartoonists. Nor are they newspaper publishers. If they wanted to be involved in international incidents, they wouldn't have become diplomats. No, they would be drawing cartoons.

The newspaper cartoon world hasn't been this incesnsed since another Dane, Marmaduke - a Great Dane, at that - implied that Moses was gay.

Actually, he didn't. But if he did, I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to issue an apology to all Jewish people. Or to gay people (our government probably should issue an apology to gay people, but for entirely different reasons, such as the lack of frontal nudity in Brokeback Mountain). Or to gay Jews. Or Great Danes. Or to gay ... you get the picture.

It's one thing to ask the newspaper to apologize, but as far as I know, Denmark has freedom of the press. (I'm no expert on the Danish system of government, but I once very briefly dated a Dane, and I know they're into "free love," so I assume freedom of the press goes along with the package.) Freedom of the press means, pretty specifically, that newspapers can publish whatever they want. Newspapers all over the world are full of offensive content, even/especially here in the U.S. Case in point: Ann Coulter's column, and/or Ann Coulter's outfits. But I don't demand that the American government issue an apology for her (although, really, somebody should). Nor do I want to censor Ann Coulter, or burn her embassies in Beirut. Burning her outfits, however, is entirely called for.

Not having seen the cartoons in question (and even if I had, I don't speak Danish, although I do enjoy a danish with my morning newspaper), I can't comment on their content. Regardless, it doesn't seem fair to blame the entire nation of Denmark for something that may be the bad taste of one cartoonist and/or publisher. It's like if North Korea decided to declare war on the U.S. because Kim Jong-Il didn't like last week's "Doonesbury." In Le Monde, a journalist made the point that Denmark is suffering retribution for its Atlantist foreign policy, and that it's one of the most Islamaphobic countries in Europe, but still, the reaction seems extreme.

As a result of the cartoon scandal, several middle eastern countries have called for a boycott of all Danish imports -- cheese, and the Euro-pop band "Aqua" (also technically classifed as cheese). And you can bet that throughout the Arab world, angry readers will be cancelling their subscriptions to Jyllands-Posten. As well they should.

The Vespa in the Cubicle (or, the story that almost caused the king to finally get bored and kill Scherezade)

I should be working, but there's a Vespa in my cubicle.

No, this isn't an overly-direct translation of a line from a Kung Fu movie. There's actually a Vespa, complete with suede seats, here in the office. Looking around, I can also see two Marc Jacobs purses; a picnic basket full of $5,000 worth of crap from Fauchon; several baskets of expensive European cosmetics; four magnums of Veuve Clicqot Grande Dame, two crates of wine (worth more than all the belongings I own put together), and a 5-foot-tall hookah. No joke.

Our offices have become a makeshift storage facility for the auction items from our annual Gala, which was held on Friday (I do fundraising for a French school which will go unnamed, but just for the record, cher Monsieur le proviseur, je ne ferais jamais du blogging au bureau, puisqu'il est interdit ...). The Gala raises a million dollars for the school, so it's a pretty swanky affair. The women, most of whom are French, wear elaborate couture dresses that are so beautiful you just want to cry. Americans aren't as big on dressing up and wearing ball gowns, which I consider unfortunate. I think that instead of the ubiquitous Casual Friday, we should have Formal Fridays, where we all come to the office wearing ball gowns. Even the dudes. It would make work more interesting.

The theme of the Gala was A Thousand and One Nights (hence the hookah, which is a middle easter water bong, not the thing you stand under with the rabbi to get married, unless you live in Canada, where, G-d love 'em, maybe you can marry your water bong). Several of the live auction items went for $20,000-$30,000+, including one of Lance Armstrong's racing bikes from the Tour de France. All the auction lots had titles related to Arabian Nights, like, "Scheherazade and the Italian Nights" (a trip to Italy) or "Voyage to the Mystic Mountains" (some Swiss ski extravaganza). It's kind of amazing that there are people - many people, in this city - who can blow $30,000 without a second thought on things they don't even remotely need.

Sigh. I want to fly first class to Italy and stay in a villa while wearing "new green chryophase and diamond earrings." I'm not sure what chryophase is, but I'm pretty sure it would make my life 100% complete.

Did Keats ever write an Ode on a Basket of La Prairie anti-cellulite cream? If not, he should have. If I weren't so cursedly ethical, I could just ... Wait. This is quickly going to devolve into another love letter to luxury goods and services, so I should probably quit while I'm ahead.

Once again, I find myself in daily, close proximity to some of the wealthiest people in the world, while I hold my breath as I charge $5 worth of groceries because I've already spent the rest of my money for the week on unneccessary crap. Case in point: a little doctor's bag full of "cosmoceuticals" (Just like a real doctor of cosmotology!). I'm already turning into Blanche Dubois, but that's a story for another day, darlin'.

****
"The only interesting people are the very rich, and the very poor," he said, raising a glass to the man who was paying the bar tab. We were young, and in Paris, and in lust, and slightly drunk, and way too impressed with our thoroughly unoriginal observation. We were neither very poor nor very rich, but bourgeois (French for "bourgeois") kids from comfortable, wide-lawned suburbs who had overly romanticized both wealth and poverty. Not real poverty, of course, in the way that most of us aren't actually starving when we say we're "starving" because we haven't eaten since breakfast. We're talking a temporary (if pretty much total) lack of money. The sort of thing that makes you appreciate luxury in the way that being slightly hungry gives one a fuller appreciation of food.

It felt Hemingway-esque, in the way that sitting in a Burger King in Paris can when you're 22 years old and/or slightly drunk. It was after a vernissage at the art gallery where I worked, which was frequented by nouveau riche Russian mafia types (it was a Russian gallery). The gallery openings were very elaborate, with champagne and caviar and such. Meanwhile, I lived in a tiny chambre de bonne (a fancy word for a converted maid's quarters, from the days before maids were allowed to bathe) which had no shower or bathtub, but did have a bidet.

The next two years would be all about being broke, but living among ridculously wealthy people. Many of them were Russians, and many had been rich beyond the dreams of avarice but, being new to capitalism, had spent all their money and come full circle back to being poor again (think: MC Hammerilivich). It's this bizarre pattern I keep repeating and repeating, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, only my debts never seem to be cleared away when I wake up to start the cycle over again & again & again ...