A true contrarian, in the Diana vs. Charles Wars of the ’90s, I was a Charles partisan all the way. Poor guy — he was expected to be one of the world’s most eligible bachelors and conduct himself accordingly, and marry a virgin. So he ended up with a toddler narcissist bride, and we all know what happened next. All over the world, women like Diana make the marital deals she did, and manage to console themselves somehow from the vast resources at their, and her, disposal — clothes, lunch, massages, aromatherapy, yoga, decorating, take your pick. I always thought it was impossible that a woman could have as many gay boyfriends as Diana and still not know the score, but there you are. Talk about high-maintenance.
(Alan, who pays pretty much zero attention to the British royals, asked me for an update when the two were divorcing. I gave him the three-minute version. He thought for a minute and said, “No wonder he goes fishing all the time.”)
So now Charles is marrying his dear Camilla, who shares his interests and plays hostess at his table and no doubt holds his craggy paw when it needs holding. I think this is just impossibly romantic. What a story for February.
Update: Now if we could just do something about those hats.
brian stouder said on February 10, 2005 at 11:17 am
And you know, Charles has a cupid-like face, if not the physique of a cherub (or whatever cupid is supposed to be)
But, as you noted earlier about the well-kept (!)moms promenading in your suburban Detroit-area malls –
no doubt a shuddering wave of melodramatic wailing and gnashing of teeth reverberated amongst those people when the perfectly tragic, perfectly shattering (and we do mean ‘perfectly’!, in both casses) news of Diana’s demise was breathlessly reported on cable news, and flashed across the internet.
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humble reader said on February 10, 2005 at 1:58 pm
If I were British, I’d be a republican (remember when that word stood for something?)and get rid of all royals. Give ’em severance packages, some job training, outplacement. If they balk…well…there’s always the Tower of London.
This is just the next chapter of the on-going saga. Diana’s ghost walks the heath (or the glen, or the moor) seeking vengeance. At least it’s a diversion from the Michael Jackson trial.
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mary said on February 10, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Don’t expect the hat situation to improve any time soon. We’ve only seen the tip of the hat iceberg, I think. Once she’s royal, silly hats become mandatory.
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alex said on February 10, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Reminds me of an old Jewish accountant in the Fort, late of late. After widowed he donned a dog collar and took a young gentile male the same age as his youngest (who was my classmate) and so scandalized his firm the partners bought him out. He and boytoy moved on to exotic climes and opened a lewd beach house before being taken by the epidemic.
I remember well when his daughter Jill, two grades ahead of me, came home from college with her new fiance–goyim. Daddy pitched a fit like I’d never seen. Amazed, I had the audacity to ask him, on a visit to his boudoir where he plied me and another young hottie with coke and watched us get into his sauna, “How can you, libertine of all libertines, stand in judment of your own daughter? You’re married to a man younger than she is, for Chrissake.”
His reply? “I did my duty. I married and reproduced. As a Jew it’s her responsibility to do the same.”
This was a man who had naked images of men all over his house, to the point it made his children stay away.That, and the alkies with DUIs holed up there in their old bedrooms in exchange for rent that I don’t bother to describe here.
The old cultural norms? Insanity, I tell you.
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adrianne said on February 11, 2005 at 4:24 pm
So to illustrate the maxim that all stories are local: Since Camilla will be the Duchess of Cornwall after she marries Charles, Jeremiah Horrigan of the Times Herald-Record asked citizens of the charming village of Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., how they feel about their new leader. To quote Izzy Vazquez of The Dapper Dog pet grooming shop: “Wasn’t one of them (royals) dressing up like a Nazi or something?”
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