I Think We’re Well Past Counting the Number of Glasses of Champagne I’ve Had By This Point: Spring Break in France, Part Three

So last Thursday, after visiting Château d’Yquem, Mother, SPARKY and I began our seven hour car ride to the Champagne region.  Have I mentioned how much I love having an iPod and a Kindle?

We made a slight detour about halfway there while in the Loire Valley to visit the town of Chenonceau, home of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Château de Chenonceau.  It was a breathtaking home, with a kitchen I’d want even without all of the modern appliances because the wood-burning bread oven is all I need to be happy!

What I think impressed me the most about the Château, however, was the fact that fireplaces were actually in use and it had the feel of an actual home with few ropes to keep you five feet from the item.  I wish other places did that because it makes you feel as if you’re in someone’s home and not a museum.  Beneath is a photo of the Gallery, which spans the width of the river upon which the Château sits:

The gardens are also breathtaking, both the formal and informal.  The formal gardens look like what you’d expect any château to have while the informal garden, which is really a vegetable and flower garden, was more impressive in my opinion.  While it is very formal, with everything labeled and in perfect rows, there are some parts where the grounds staff seems to be somewhat creative:

There were also tulips planted for everywhere, which created this amazing rainbow of colors:

These flowers are actually used in floral arrangements inside the rooms of the Château, which is really interesting because it adds to the sense that this is someone’s home and not just a museum.

Now, as if any of our homes look like that unless it’s photo shoot day, but still, it’s a nice touch.

The Formal Gardens:

Before leaving, I got this photo looking down the main drive to the Château:

If only that driveway weren’t dirt.

Even though it is kind of a schlep to get there, I really enjoyed myself and again, that’s really because you feel as though you’re not in a museum, but really in someone’s home that is open for the garden tour.

We finally left as everything was closing and continued driving toward our destination in Vinay.  Again, I’m so glad I have a Kindle and an iPod.  I made it about nine chapters of my book, “I am Charlotte Simmons,” by the time we arrived in Éparnay for dinner.  I’ll discuss that book at another time; even though it’s about things that aren’t new to a college student like myself, reading about them seems to make them sound shocking.

Our hotel in Vinay left me with mixed emotions.  On one hand, the staff was very courteous and made our stay lovely, but at the same time, for what we were paying, I was kind of shocked about the hotel itself.  We stayed at the Relais & Châteaux Hostellerie La Briqueterie and for a company that prides itself on being a luxury brand, the hotel was old and looked more than ready for a renovation.  That said, we weren’t there to see the hotel since I didn’t see a champagne vineyard in the backyard.

In case y’all don’t know, there isn’t a town called Champagne.  Rather, it is a region about three hours from Paris that is the only place in the world where sparkling wine can actually be called Champagne.  Unlike Bordeaux where the vineyards are where everything takes place, the grapes used to produce champagne come from vineyards that are spread throughout the region and so bottling takes place mostly in the towns of either Épernay or Reims.  What visitors to the region see are the caves, which is where the champagne is stored in the bottle while it matures.  It may not sound that interesting until you realize you’re staring at 2,000 bottles of champagne just sitting there in one alcove and then you get a sense of just how amazing it is.

Our tour on Friday was in Épernay and it was to the biggest Champagne house in the region, Moët & Chandon, one of the cornerstone companies in Bernard Arnault’s LVMH.  Also located at the Moët & Chandon house is Dom Perignon, which what we thought we were signed up to see.  Apparently, we were wrong.

You don’t see the production in person at the Champagne houses; instead, a video, this one narrated by the actress Scarlett Johansson and is actually available to watch on their website, tells you a brief history of the house and then of the production of the champagne before ending with a lengthy spiel about how the house’s champagne is so luxurious, it’s associated with the most luxurious events and people; it stands for luxury.  Y’all, we know that if you just want to half-ass it with champagne, you buy someone a bottle of Moët and that if you want to actually go all out for someone, you go for the LVMH brands of either Dom Perignon or my favorite, Krug, which isn’t open to the public.

After the video ended, we proceeded down into the caves to see where the bottles are being aged before being sent around the world to be sold.  All those magnums!  To say I had a an out-of-body experience down there would be a gross understatement.  Let me be perfectly open with y’all and say that in my mind, this is what Heaven looks like.

While on the Moët tour, I did get to see something I’ve wanted to see since first learning about it since November, a Nabuchadnezzar, which is the largest size bottle of Champagne, roughly equivalent to twenty ordinary bottles of champagne.  SPARKY said no.

After downing a few glasses of Moët, the traditional Impérial and then the Rosé Impérial, which I had never before tasted and rather enjoyed, we entered gift shop.  Now, I went into this whole tour planning on purchasing a bottle of Andy Warhol-inspired POP ART 2002 Vintage because I just loved the idea and the colors on those labels were so outrageous that I just had to have one.  Then I realized that I had purchased so many other bottles of wine that I was fast-approaching a limit of some sort and decided that the set of six glasses with the Dom Pérignon logos from each of the six pop art colors would be just fine.

So, after my purchase, we said goodbye to the statue of M. Pérignon and headed a block down the road to lunch at La Grillade.

(The man who stole my heart over 300 years ago by inventing champagne, the monk Dom Pérignon)

La Grillade was so much fun.  First of all, the chef and owner, M. Christophe Bernard does a little bit of everything; he’s part chef, part server, part bartender, part schmoozer and just plain fun.  It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced and y’all would think it’s because maybe the food isn’t so good so he has to do something to get you to have a good time, but in reality, the food was divine!  If memory, and my stomach, serves me correctly, I had duck, which was prepared in the fire place in the dining room and then an ice cream sundae, which was so good!  I know, it’s sad, but the chef recommended it to me personally, so how could I say no?  Since we were in the Champagne region, I decided that only champagne would be drunk so why not have a glass with lunch after just having two at the tasting?  We’re on vacation!  To show that I’m clearly not the only one with that brilliant idea, the mantle of the fireplace in the dining room has eleven very tall vases filled with corks and the name of each month of the year on them.  On the prep table for the dishes cooked in the fireplace, was April’s vase, already on its way to being filled up just two days into the new month:

So glad I could help fill it up!

After lunch, we drove to the nearby city of Reims, which has more than just a history with Champagne.  Reims is actually home to one of the best preserved gothic cathedrals in the world, the UNESCO World Heritage Site Notre-Dame de Reims.  What I found more interesting than its gothic architecture, which doesn’t really do a lot for me, was that this was the cathedral where the Kings of France came to be crowned.  This makes sense though, because if you have to spend all day in one of those get-ups with that two-foot-tall wig on your head, you would need some champagne just to celebrate not blowing over in a breeze!  Just across from the cathedral was a champagne store where I finally got to see a sabre in person!  If only it weren’t 34,000€!  The store’s owner, after I explained to him in French that SPARKY thinks its dangerous and blah, blah, blah something about glass getting in the bottle, me swallowing glass and dying, the owner, who looked not unlike the Agatha Christie-created detective Hercule Poirot, proceeded to explain to me, who then translated for SPARKY, that the pressure inside the bottle is so powerful that when you do in fact break the top off, the pressure forces all of that glass out away from the bottle, making it impossible to re-enter the bottle.  That’s all I needed to hear!  While there, we bought a demi-bottle of Krug since it’s my favorite champagne and it wasn’t possible to tour this trip (it’s only open to actual Krug lovers, which SPARKY and Mother are not; plus, you have to buy a lot of it in order to be considered a Krug lover, which I don’t, yet).  Dinner that night was back in Épernay at Bistrot le 7, located at 7, rue des Berceaux (how fitting).  I think we all had the sole, but the duck tar-tar before hand was excellent.  The evening was a lot of fun and it’s not pretentious, but simple.

Saturday morning arrived and it was onward to Reims to visit Taittinger and Veuve Cliquot before returning to Paris for one final night.  Now, I’m not a Taittinger man myself.  I prefer Veuve, Bollinger, Dom, and mon amour, Krug, but Mother planned this so I just went along with it.  Like Moët, there was a video, but no Scarlett Johansson and a much larger group of people, with children and the parents from Larchmont, so of course they thought their little shits were the greatest things since sliced bread.  Though I do hope those idiot parents realize that their children need to be a lot smarter than they are if the goal is even a mediocre prep school in the city, so sorry.  The visit in the Caves was interesting, but the champagne didn’t do a whole lot for me.  It was just so-so.  I blame the kids.

Between tour, we had a phenomenal last lunch in France at Le Jardin Brasserie on the grounds of Les Crayères hotel.  It was warm enough to sit outdoors, which the restaurant had every single patron doing, and look out onto a private world that makes you forget you’re in a major French city.  Wait, that might have just been the champagne talking.  Mother and I had the Cod, which was so good (oh the butter) with a side of parmesan cheese-coated frites and haricot-verte while SPARKY I think had the salmon, which he said he liked; he eats so quickly that no one has a chance to try anything.  Oh, and of course there was another glass of champagne pour moi!

Following lunch, we headed just down the road to visit the Veuve herself.  Veuve Cliquot is a huge part of why I even wanted to visit the Champagne region.  At the end of last year, I read Tilar Mazzeo’s biography of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Cliquot and the champagne house she created with her husband before his death and how she turned it into the multi-million dollar empire it has become today.  “The Widow Cliquot” was what brought me to Reims and I was determined to get the most out of this visit.  the caves, which Mother decided she didn’t need to see, where the grandest of them all, beginning with a grand staircase that was under-lit in Veuve Cliquot orange:

Okay, so maybe it isn’t quite Titanic, but I bet Kate Winslet would have walked down these steps to see Leo.

Even the floors have the Veuve’s seal on them:

Okay, that’s a little gauche, but I’ll let it slide.

Unlike the other houses, which seemed a bit stuffy, Veuve Cliquot was a bit more animated with everything done at the house somehow making its way back to being related to the Veuve.  Even this new tunnel that was dug in 2005 has a painting of the Veuve facing it so that every employee there can be reminded of all of her hard work and brilliant ideas:

I’d call this a tunnel of love, but it leads to booze, which is more important.

The tour of the caves ended with some rather unique features though.

I still have no words to describe this hot mess and I’ve had a week to think about it!

The stairway back up to the tasting room was done in a really neat way because they have listed on every step the years that there have been Vintages champagnes.  I found a 1989 so I guess now I need to get a bottle!

The champagne we tasted at Veuve Cliquot was also unlike the champagne we had at the two other houses since this was not the regular blend, but instead a glass of the 2004 La Grande Dame.  It was the perfect end to the perfect tour.  I bought a towel to wrap around my bottles at home.

One petrol station visit later and it was au revoir, Reims, au revoir, Champagne and bonjour, Paris!  Since we had to be at the airport early in the morning on Sunday, we stayed at the airport Hyatt, which despite being very nice, didn’t even give you free wireless, which I found to be a bit tacky.  But as if I had time to check my email.  Paris awaited so we dropped off our bags and headed back into the city for one last night.  I must say that SPARKY did a good job of driving in Paris, considering that those wild freaks on the motorcycles zip through and don’t pay any attention to anyone or anything in their way.  We headed to Bon Marché’s new food hall, La Grande Epicerie de Paris, which may have been a trip highlight for me!  Dozens of different types of sea salts (they even had citrus-infused sea salt), pâtes galore, desserts, the largest white asparagus any of us had ever seen, and then I saw my love; my favorite chocolate in the world, Cailler.  The first Swiss chocolate company may today be owned by Nestlé, but it’s almost never seen outside the Swiss border so for me, this was such a treat!  Naturally, I bought some.  The food hall may not have the same beauty as Harrod’s infamous one, but it has the feel of a place where you can actually go and see real Parisians buying groceries to make dinner for that night.  It’s not prissy and overdone, but simple and well-designed to suit the needs of the 21st Century shopper.  Even if you don’t have anywhere to cook the food, just walk through and observe all the delicious food that the FDA won’t let us import!

As it was getting late, we headed to get dinner at La Cigale Récamier, which is known for its soufflés.  We only had one for dessert, but it was divine.  After dinner, we barely made it out of the parking garage since our car was so damn big and proceeded to leave Paris.  This is where SPARKY showed his true stupidity.  So while parked at a traffic light, I could see that he had a better view of the Eiffel Tower than I did and so I asked him to take the photo for me with his iPhone.  This is what he gives me:

This isn’t a joke at all and when I asked him why he took a photo of a Paris traffic light, SPARKY honestly said, “Well it was lit up!”  What’s worse is that I know he’s been to the top of the Eiffel Tour before because I schlepped him up there when I was nine!  HOW IN THE HELL DO YOU MISTAKE THE EIFFEL TOUR?

At least he got the Arc de Triomphe right:

When we arrived at the Avis return area, it was closed and we had quite a difficult time returning the car, but we finally did, only to be nearly locked inside one of the terminals, which was closing for the night.  Then, the hotel’s shuttle was nearly twenty minutes late arriving at the airport and so we didn’t get to sleep until very early Sunday morning because everything had to fit in the suitcases!

After a few hours of sleep, Mother, SPARKY, seven bags, and I boarded the shuttle back to Charles de Gualle.  I got them checked in for their flight, said farewell, hopped the shuttle to Terminal 2G, and flew back to Italy exhausted, 5lbs heavier, hemorrhaging money like never before, and very, very happy!

This trip, more than all the others I’ve ever taken in my life, was probably the most rewarding because for the first time abroad, I wasn’t treated like an American visiting France because I used all of the French I learned over the course of the seven years I spent studying it and surprised not only myself, but SPARKY, Mother and a whole lot of French people, who all said that my accent was perfect (which is good to hear, especially since I spent four years getting that to where it is now).  In all honesty, being told that I had a perfect accent and spoke French beautifully by French citizens was without a doubt the highest compliment I have ever received.

Do I think the trip was worth it?  You bet.  Any regrets?  Yes, I should have gotten the bigger box of macarons at Ladurée and the other pair of Tod’s I tried on.  Would I do it all over again tomorrow?  Oh yes indeed.

Of all the friends I had when we sat around my kitchen table that night and talked about what we were going to do when we turned Twenty-one, I’m now the only one who actually carried it out and being able to say that is something I’ll always cherish.  I wouldn’t call this the trip of a lifetime because I’d already been to Paris before this, but it was certainly my favorite trip I’ve taken because for once, I was able to show my parents something that interests me and introduce them to a part of France they would have otherwise never visited.  Yes, we didn’t go to Spain, but that’s okay, because I don’t remember enough Spanish to get by and while it will be some time before we take another family trip to Europe, we’ll get there eventually, just as long as it comes after we see Asia, which is up next.

Until next time…

-JD

I Figured Out How to Last Five Days on Spring Break with Both Parents: Wine and Champagne Tastings the Whole Time: Spring Break in France, Part Two

While Mother is beyond tolerable for multiple days at a time, SPARKY, like a child, needs activities to kept busy.  So, I decided that for the five fun-filled days he was coming to France, we’d fulfill a dream I had when I was Fifteen.  While all my other friends were talking about hammered and going to Vegas and whatnot for their Twenty-First birthdays, I was already then talking about drinking my way through Bordeaux.  SPARKY’s activity was to be the designated driver for five days and so on Tuesday morning, his plane touched down at CDG and he boarded the TGV right at the airport so he could be whisked off to Bordeaux.  Mother and I arrived an hour or so later and as torture for not schlepping my Mac to France with me (because as if I needed it), Mother insisted that I help her with a speech she had to give when she returned to America.  I fell asleep after twenty minutes into the train ride.

SPARKY and his international GPS (I’m old-fashioned so I still prefer the Michelin Map, not the annoying bitch who butchers the French language) met us at the train station in the rental car that they gave us simply because the guy at Avis took half a look at him and instantly saw the American flag blowing in the wind with «Yankee Doodle» playing in the background.  I know this because no European buys a car with cup holders!

Four turns around the same damn traffic circle later, we began our trip.  We stayed at a hotel that’s actually located on a vineyard,which was interesting.  Château Smith Haut Lafitte‘s hotel, Les Sources de Caudalie was a lovely property, but the staff could have been a bit more accommodating with regard to reservations and booking vineyard tours.  Instead of even trying to book vineyard tours for us, they simply passed us off to the very sweet Mary Dardenne of Decanter Tours, who helped us get into three tours for Winesday: Château Palmer, Château Kirwan and Château Pichon-Longueville Baron.  We were unable to visit the super diva First Growth Chateaux (Margaux, Latour, Lafite, Mouton-Rothschild, and Haut-Brion) because we arrived within days of the buyers so everything was booked solid.  So instead, we did two-Third Growths before ending our day with a Second Growth.  Dinner Tuesday night was at the hotel’s restaurant, La Table du Lavoir, which was kind of amazing (order the foie gras and then the duck) and the space itself was simply gorgeous.  It’s very rustic and French, but you can see very modern, almost Asian influences all around.  Wednesday rolled around and oh if I wan’t giddy like a Seventh Grade boy seeing girls for the first time in a way that wasn’t disgusting because they’re girls!

Château Palmer was our only tour that wasn’t private and here I am (actually knowledgeable (slightly) about the Bordeaux wines and whatnot) standing next Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.  While Tweedle Dumb just took photos/played with his iPhone the whole time, Tweedle Dee always prefeced every stupid question by saying, «Don’t be embarrassed» to me.  Guess what mother, SAYING, «Don’t be embarrassed» IS MORE EMBARRASSING THAN ANY ONE OF YOUR QUESTIONS!  Sorry, I figured this was the only place I could really embarrass her just as she embarrassed me for five days in Bordeaux and then later in the Champagne region.  Personally, Palmer was just so-so.  Maybe the fact that it was barely 11h0 when we started drinking that made it just so-so, but regardless, I wasn’t impressed enough to buy a bottle.  Plus, 70€ for a Third Growth is a bit outrageous.  You can see Margaux out your cellar’s window, mazel.  You’re not Margaux so don’t try.  From there, we drove down rather bumpy roads before arriving at Château Kirwan, which was the smallest operation of the three.  Apparently though, there was some sort of scheduling error so they didn’t really have us down for touring, but they gave us one anyway.  Kirwan was much more… down to earth and less fussy than the others.  Plus, it was there that I snapped this amazing photo:

The man in the photo is inserting the cork into the bottle manually because Kirwan’s so small that they don’t have their own bottling facility since it’s quite expensive.  But, because of what’s happening this week, bottles of the 2010 wine must be ready for tasting and so they’re able to bottle a few using rather old techniques.  Since they didn’t charge us for the tour because of the scheduling mishap, and because the wine was actually quite good, I bought a half-bottle.  Unfortunately, SPARKY didn’t listen to me and left the bubble wrap and tape home so that bottle broke and got all over his suitcase and clothing, but don’t feel bad for him because it’s his own damn fault for not bringing the bubble wrap and tape.

At this point, Mother was basically drunk (cheap date) and SPARKY, our designated driver, was hungry so it was time for lunch, which was at Café Lavinal in Pauillac.  This very 30’s bistro complete with a zinc bar was the place to be for lunch in Bordeaux (very close to Château Latour and Pichon-Longueville Baron).  The food is simple and amazing; I had duck and the best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten and yes, I realize that I ate a lot of duck on this trip, but it was so good so quit judging.  However, SPARKY, despite me explaining it to him five times, didn’t understand that in Europe, you can’t get a cup of coffee, let alone after breakfast.  If you want a café, you get it AFTER lunch and don’t be surprised that they don’t give you what you want.  It’s espresso, period!  He still doesn’t get it.  Also, I was shocked that Mother and SPARKY were shocked that I was ordering wine with lunch.  Hello, we’re in Bordeaux and I’m stuck with a walking billboard for America and Mother so of course I need to keep drinking!

On our way to our final tour of the day, Château Pichon-Longueville Baron, we passed what is without question the best thing ever:

I call it «Booze de France» in honor of the Tour de France for which it was designed.  I’d love to see that get tested drugs and alcohol during the Tour de France!  Château Pichon-Longueville Baron was without a doubt my favorite of the three tours.  First of all, we had the nicest tour guide who really taught us more than the other two tour guides did.  We got to go out into the vineyard and see the first buds of grapes, witness the blending of the grapes firsthand (the final batch too), see the bottling room, and most importantly, we got to drink the most of all the tours (four glasses) so hell yes I bought some!  Plus, while the château itself is very old, it is flanked on either side by these two very modern buildings with the cellar beneath a pool that is in the middle of the tree buildings:

After our lovely tour of Pichon-Longueville Baron, we stopped at the chocolate store Mademoiselle de Margaux where Mother and I bought some chocolates (she’s nice and bought gifts; I’m not and plan to eat it myself)  before heading to see the city of Bordeaux itself, which is undergoing a sort of renaissance as it attempts to compete with the world-renound vineyards that lie just outside the city limits in the region that bears its name.

Now, maybe it was the rain or maybe it was the fact that I had already consumed about ten full glasses of wine throughout the course of the day, but Bordeaux just seemed a bit dull.  It had the architectural majesty of Paris but lacked the energy.  Not to fret though, we managed to find a delicious, and well-reviewd/very expensive restaurant at which to dine for the evening.  La Tupina was so much fun.  Our waitress and I had a full conversation in French about what we had done that day while Mother and Sparky just sat there, hopelessly lost in translation.  Plus, she really went out of her way to see that we had a memorable meal, which we did.  SPARKY had the roast chicken fried in duck fat in a fireplace with stuffing and french Fries, which was heavenly while Mother had the best braised shoulder of lamb I’ve ever had.  I, on the other hand, went with the very traditional and local dish of fresh pasta with foie gras and mushrooms.  Served in the same ceramic dish in which it was cooked, this dish actually rocked my world, and I feel that term is highly juvenile too.  Everywhere we went, we seemed surrounded by serious oenophiles which just made it that much more amazing for me since this was something I had wanted to for the past six years, and even more so this past year as I’ve been reading so much about wine and Bordeaux.

Thursday left us time for just one tour before high-tailing it to the Champagne region, but it was as close to wine heaven as I got this trip.  Château d’Yquem is one of the only white wines produced in Bordeaux and its sweet, honey flavor makes it one of my all-time favorite wines.  Basically, if it were a red wine, it would in fact be a First Growth.  SPARKY, of course, had to reduce the number of years until I have my first ulcer by about a decade when he asked our guide about Burgundy wines!  Amazingly, this was about as far from his dumbest moment of the trip as y’all can get.  Now unlike the other three vineyards we saw on Wednesday which are either family-owned or part family-owned but the family have a direct relationship with the vineyard even today, d’Yquem is partly owned by the destroyer of the very definition of luxury himself, Bernard Arnault and his company, Louis Vuitton-Möet-Hennessey and it had a much more corporate and serious feel to it.  Now, having educated myself a little on the wines of Bordeaux, I was prepared for the insane price tags that come with the world’s best wine; Tweedles Dee and Dumb weren’t the least bit prepared and let it show by going insane upon learning that a single bottle of Château d’Yquem sells for about $700.  That explains why d’Yquem served us the smallest amount of wine.

Before starting our seven-hour drive to the Champagne region, we stopped to try and get lunch near d’Yquem, but everyone seemed to be closed in the tiny little town nearby, but next to the Tourist Office, I saw the best vending machine ever made:

Let’s take a closer look:

That’s right,this is a Baguette Vending Machine!  The only vending machine that could come close to topping this is that one that dispense gold, but even that is a bit too much if you asked me.  I’m just curious as to how the baguette tastes after being in a vending machine for at least a full day.  That’s all for tonight, but tomorrow we’ll wrap up my amazing  journey through France by making an unexpected detour to visit the world-famous Château de Chenonceau, going down into the caves of multiple champagne houses and finally ending with the dumbest thing SPARKY has ever done.  Night y’all.

-JD

Very, very happy to be in Bordeaux!

I Bet the Word “Re-Virginated” Isn’t One Tiger Mamma Taught Her Kids

Alas, we have come to the end of this experiment in seeing how long it takes me to go crazy from reading a book, but for some reason, I’m glad I did it.  Tiger Mamma’s ending kind of came at no surprise.  Part Three opened with a story of how they got another dog, but ended up being about how Lulu was a rebel child and Sophia was a perfect child.  Fortunately for Pushkin, the second dog, Tiger Mamma didn’t pull any of her usual stunts with regard to pushing the dog to its limit.  And with that, we begin her downfall.

Despite being a stellar student with awards and titles like “prodigy” in local newspapers (aka: things I never got and always hated the people who did), Lulu hates her mom (so would I).  Tiger Mamma would come and take this poor child out of school during recess, lunch and useless activities (which, I don’t blame her for making the kid skip the useless stuff since I hated all of those stupid art and music classes) so she could practice the violin as much as possible.  It’s quite insane to be honest that someone risk being fired so that their kid could be forced to practice the violin.  Things, however, become somewhat relatable when it comes time for Lulu to ask for a haircut and Tiger Mamma refuses because Lulu didn’t want to master some godforsaken piece of classical music prompting Lulu to ask why she must bargain for everything when it comes to dealing with her mother.  Now, I get this, but Lulu, if this is bad, you have no idea.  I’ve had to bargain with Mufasa for even the cheapest of toys at the check-out counter of FAO Schwartz with a mile-long line waiting behind us until I would finally cave into his usually horrific offer.  That said, now I pull the same routine on him and oh how revenge is sweet!

Tiger Mamma’s reaction to Lulu refusing to make a toast at her father’s 50th Birthday party is the best line of the whole book, however (I apologize in advance for not having page numbers tonight in my quotes, but Kindle is in my bag already and I’m too lazy to go get it.) : “And look at you-you’ve been given every opportunity, every privilege.  You’ve never had to wear imitation Adidas with four stripes instead of three.”  I’m sorry, but this might qualify as being one of the single greatest lines ever written (sorry, Shakespeare)!  I didn’t even know imitation Adidases were made!

Then we get to Lulu’s Bat Mitzvah where nut case wants the child to play a violin piece in addition to all the hebrew that must be learned.  Lulu refuses and TM threatens to cancel the party after.  Lulu should be lucky because I was told that my Bar Mitzvah party was not my party, but rather a party given by my parents in honor of me and that I should consider myself not only lucky to be allowed to attend, but lucky to have been allowed to have friends there.  They also made it clear that it wasn’t my party by serving a Mocha cake!  As anyone who knows me will tell y’all, I DON’T DRINK COFFEE, ESPRESSO, MOCHA, OR ANYTHING RELATED TO THEM!  It was a lovely time just staring at that damn cake in the freezer for the next year!

The book attempts to get somber in a clearly desperate attempt to make us sympathize with Chua and try to ignore the fact that she’s been a complete psychotic freak for the last twenty-six chapters.  Returning to insanity in Chapter Twenty-Eight, TM mentions that non-a-real-Jew husband has always, “accused me of a tendency to use disproportionate force, attaching huge moral opprobrium to the smallest of oversights.”  This comes after the perfect one, Sophia, leaves the pantry door open and allowing the dogs to get into the rice, which then gets all over the kitchen.  Gee, I’m glad he finally noticed his wife’s crazy!  As TM and Sophia try to have a heart-to-heart moment during this time, TM ends up on some random tangent about Disney and being the oldest child that no one worries about and can be counted on, eventually leading her to say, “In Disney movies, the ‘good daughter’ always has to have a breakdown and realize that life is not all about following rules and winning prizes, and then take off her clothes and run into the ocean or something like that.  But that’s just Disney’s way of appealing to all the people who never win any prizes.  Winning prizes gives you opportunities, and that’s freedom-not running into the ocean.”  First of all, IN WHAT DISNEY MOVIE DOES THIS DREAM SEQUENCE OCCUR and you can still win a prize for stripping and running into the ocean!  It’s called MTV Spring Break in Panama City!  Also, I guess this confirms my assumptions that Disney keeps porn in that Vault of it has.

Back to the book, it seems that Chapter Thirty-One is where TM has her downfall. On a family trip to Russia, Lulu is allowed to leave her violin home, then when she refuses to eat the caviar at their restaurant in Red Square and ends up breaking a water glass, it’s clear that TM has failed!  Upon returning home, Lulu ends up cutting back violin big time, taking up tennis seriously, but without TM’s obsessiveness lingering in the background, and it seems that Lulu has a much better and happier life because of it.

In the end, TM admits that she really did a blend of both Chinese and Western parenting, which I kind of think might be a good solution because I’m beyond sick of seeing girls with their mothers who are wearing the same outfits and acting more like friends and less like parents.  It’s embarrassing to see children get away with the equivalent of murder and then have the parents wondering why we as a nation are falling behind in the world.  It’s a simple answer!  The baby-boomers who were born in the late 50s-early 60s and onward completely rejected everything that society told them to do, which we know (hippies, peace protests, etc…) and that seems to have included how to raise children.  At the same time, China caught up and kept on with strict parenting on steroids and now they’re poised to basically take over the world.  Fortunately, my parents weren’t useless and determined to have my love and affection.  Instead, basically got a 1950s childhood in the 1990s.  That of course was until I learned that I myself had great power over both of them and flipped the table on my seemingly weak parents.  Now, my mother and I have a great relationship and we’re being really nice and letting Mufasa come to France with us for Spring Break.

In the end, I have to admit that I kind of liked “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom” and pray that all expecting parents (which there should be none reading this blog) and parents read so they can learn not to make the same mistakes that the idiot Real Housewives all have made when it comes to raising children!  YOU ARE THEIR PARENT, NOT THEIR FRIEND!  All of that said, Amy Chua is still insane and I really want to call Child Protective Services on her!

Now I’ve just started reading Tom Wolfe’s “I am Charlotte Simmons” and the word “re-virginated” is used on Page Two so yeah, I’m hooked!  I’d love to write more about how he’s not talking about Duke University AT ALL, but I’m waking up in just under three and a half hours so I can head to Florence for my flight to Paris, so until next time…

-JD

If My Mother Ever Called Me Garbage, Let Alone in Public, There Would Have Been Some Extreme Makeover Home Addition of Another Kind

Because instead of having the freakshow from ABC come and then tear my house down only to replace it with a sub-quality home with Chinese-made drywall and Kenmore appliances from Sears, somebody would definitely being headed to Camp Cupcake.

But alas, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom has managed to teach me that in China, it’s perfectly normal to tell your child that he or she (one child law, remember) is garbage in public because it supposedly makes the child feel bad without hurting his or her self-esteem.  Again, if I was called garbage by my parents, there would be consequences for them (and it would answer the question as to why I keep a dagger next to my bed)!  Miss Chua then goes on to say, “The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners” (Chua, 50).

Her example is about how Westerners won’t call their kids fatties and tell them that they ned to lose weight at once.  Clearly this woman has never met my grandmother who has said things like this to people without thinking twice (instead of saying I’m fat, I have been told that I am too thin, which I kind of take as a compliment since at least I’m not being told I’m fat).  What’s worse is that when Miss Chua writes about the calling her daughter garbage incident, she claims to be shocked that “Western” parents find this horrifying, disgusting and even bringing one mother to tears.  Really, you’re shocked people find this horrifying and can’t believe you’re not behind bars?  Lady, if I weren’t in Italy and being charged through the damn roof to make a phone call to America, child protective services would have been called by now and actually, I’m SHOCKED no one hasn’t called them on her yet.

That, amazingly, wasn’t the best/worst (however you see it) thing I read last night.  When discussing how parents deal with grades and self esteem, Chua writes:

If a Chinese child gets a B-which would never happen-there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion.  The devastated Chinese mother would then get a dozen, maybe hundreds, of practice tests and work through them with the child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to A.  Chinese parents demand perfect grades becasue they believe that their child can get them.  If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough.  That’s why the solution to substandard perfromance is always to excoriate, punish, and shame the child.  The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and improve from it.  (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything.

Page 51

First of all, your husband isn’t Jewish.  I’m sorry, but no Jew, regardless of how religious  he/she is, can keep the ego-inflating parental praise contained within the walls of the shtub.  Please, if Tiger Mamma knew the bragging about children that REALLY goes on with Jews, she’d probably slit her wrists, throw herself off a skyscraper and still manage to cut her heart out and watch it stop beating before hitting the ground!  Oh, and don’t worry, y’all gentiles do the same kak as well, but I’m just attacking this retard of a husband of hers and he’s a disgraced member of my religion, which I realize I have completely stereotyped.

Secondly, I’m sorry, but I know Chinese children who have gotten Bs before.  Yes, they go to Rollins (all five of them, and that’s not being racist, that’s stating a fact), but still, Bs.  Oh, and I don’t think their parents didn’t seemed to care too much because the money stilled flowed like honey, so there’s  a flaw in your brilliant race theory!

As for your little kids owe parents everything spiel, I’m going with your not-a-real-Jew husband and say that no I don’t owe my parents anything because if it had been up to me, I would have so gone to find a WASP family on the Upper East Side or some member of the landed gentry in England.  They know this too.  If anything, my parents owe me more because I’ve technically moved out of their house and given them back SOME, not all, of their privacy.  Oh, and have I mentioned that UVa is a state school and I pay in-state tuition as opposed to $50,000+ a year Rollins?

Tiger Mamma continues her rant by adding that Chinese parents know what’s best for their child and for that reason, place their decisions above their child’s wishes and desires.  Therefore, there’s not summer camp, no dating in High School and no school play participation.  Personally, I loved all NINE years of summer camp, and in my final one, I met Andrew, who is now someone I talk to multiple times a day, everyday (that has changed slightly with me being in Italy and him in LA, but it’ll resume in May).  Also, the no dating in High School explains so much about why Chinese kids look so lost and out of place in college when it comes to anything related to the opposite sex.  Dating/lots of pre-martial sex might help these children with the extreme mommy issues they will most certainly have in the future.  Notice I said mommy issues there because the dad is basically non-existent in this Chinese method.

I feel if I keep going tonight, I may actually go insane because I just cannot believe the things I’m reading and I honestly feel that this can’t be true.  This woman could have not married a Jew, no matter how unreligious he is.  Oh, but before I go for tonight, I’d like to make one correction to this freak book: Yellow Fever is a very deadly, re-emerging disease that you can get from a mosquito and not some California trend in which white guys go for Chinese women, regardless of how they look.  That’s not called Yellow Fever honey; that’s what we in America call a third marriage:

(the clip starts at 1:45, but Grace and I both thought that it’s highly educational and should be considered required viewing)

I’m off to bed, but I can’t wait to see what crazy kak Tiger Mamma throws at me tonight.

-JD

Tiger Mamma Brought It and I’m Only on Chapter Two

This woman is crazy/genius/in desperate need of therapy/quite possibly the most intelligent person on earth!  No drums because they lead to drugs (kind of true), one of her children was reading Sartre at age three (I read Sartre at twenty following years of French and I couldn’t even understand the English translation, let alone attempt the French one!), decided that the only hobby her Sartre-reading daughter could be allowed was playing the piano, and did I mention that this American-born mother is married to a Jew!  To quote a friend of mine upon telling her this, “WHAT?  The Jew allowed no coddling?”  My reaction to this was more on the lines of, “How in the hell is this woman married to a Jew?  We’re the most obsessed group of society when it comes to our children, not to mention the fact that the idea of bragging about our children comes standard with our bodily operating system (little Muammar has a defect with that one, but he’s working it out himself, partly because his warranty expired during the Johnson administration).

What’s most interesting, though, is that Miss Chua starts the book off by saying that the “Western way ” of raising children is perfectly fine and that not all Chinese mothers are “Tiger moms” before commencing her spheell on how perfect her first daughter, Sophia, was and how she was so quiet and so attentive and so intent on learning new things, which leads Tiger Mamma to force this poor girl to learn division and multiplication while still in preschool using a Chinese calculator!  Can y’all believe I’m barely into this book?  Anyway, I’ve got to get back to studying Italian Cultural History, but I can’t wait to read about Louisa, the second child, whose name apparently means, “famous warrior.”  With a mother as crazy as this one, you need a name with the word warrior in the meaning!

-JD

Bring It On, Tiger Mamma!

So having just finished Tom Wolfe’s brilliantly written and captivating novel about Master of the Universe Sherman McCoy, The Bonfire of the Vanities, I thought that I would take a break before starting my next Wolfe novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons and read what is one of the most controversial books of the near already, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom.  From what I saw on the news and read in newspapers, this book gives insight into how Chinese children are raised and demonstrates how the coddling, you are their friend not their parent, 1970s and onward style of parenting that thankfully mother and little Muammar refrained from doing (partly because they’re both old enough to actually remember Kennedy being shot as opposed to learning about it in school) when raising your’s truly is the reason that China will soon replace the United States as the world’s greatest superpower.  I’m personally looking forward to reading about how the author, Amy Chua, wouldn’t allow her child to go to the bathroom until the child played a piece on the piano properly and got upset if she thought the homemade presents her children made weren’t their best work.  Hell, I’d be pissed too if the macaroni that was supposed to be used to make dinner tomorrow night was suddenly glued to a piece of paper with that awful glitter all over it (and now all over me)!  Side Note: To Whoever invented glitter, please know that I forever hate you!

In any case, do plan on me mentioning the insanity of this book in the coming weeks (I read slowly for about 45 minutes to an hour at night before going to bed so it could take a while to finish).  Until next time…

-JD

To the People of Los Angeles: GET OFF THE ROAD!

I’m sure the lovely three million, plus legal (and countless more illegal) citizens of Los Angeles would like to know why I’m suggesting they stop driving altogether so suddenly.  Well, it’s because Andrew, someone who has said on countless occasions that driving is for other people to do for him while he sits in the back, is driving between the University of Spoiled Children and the land of the purse dog, expressionless faces and people made famous from sex scandals multiple times each week from now until May.  This is also scary for another reason: Andrew has only driven a few times (if y’all recall, I have let him drive my car on more than one occasion, but there were barely any other cars on the road and he didn’t drive on heavily trafficked roads).  To comply with that stupid hands-free law in Califronia (I’m sorry, but it makes us all look like we’re mentally unstable if we appear to all be talking aimlessly to no one), I’ve sent him my BlueTooth headset since I never use the thing and clearly won’t need it in Italy.  While in LA for the semester, Andrew is interning for ICM, a talent agency that represents such stars as Frank Langella, Beyoncé and Woody Allen.  The only problem I have with Andrew spending the semester in LA is that instead of being six hours ahead of him, which is what I would be if he were back in Durham, I’m now going to be nine hours ahead of the only person I know who actually gets eight hours of sleep at night.  Therefore, the only time we can talk is at the end of the day, which has already been an adjustment since he’s been in LA for two weeks.

Since our last “chat,” (I feel like that’s the write word to call these posts, since I do know most of the people reading them) I have left Florida, but not after some final moments of fun!  I made it down to Miami (yes Will Smith, in the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach till the break of dawn) to see my friend, Monique, after only three and a half years since last seeing each other, in Coconut Grove, where we had a great French lunch.  From there, it was off to the Bal Harbour Shops to pick up a little something “special” for Grace and a birthday present for Dr. No (of all the evil villain/Soviet Premier/Dictator names I have given him, that one is the most fitting I think).  Y’all, that place is just scary because while Palm Beach is just the land of the WASPS where Worth Avenue has all the glitz and glam of yesteryear with old money, Bal Harbour Shops screams “I just sold a kilo of coke and have to get the money out somehow so what better way than through Dolce & Gabbanna underwear and Prada suits.”  The people there don’t buy one thing at a time; instead, they take my grandmother’s rule of buying in bulk, which is done exclusively at Costco, to a level that is simply obscene.  Though the absolute highlight of the trip to Bal Harbour was when a five-year-old kid looked at my watch and went, “oh, that’s so cheap.”  It was a low point in my life knowing that a child sixteen years younger than I had a watch that was probably three times as expensive as mine, which was not cheap I might add.

Following that little arrogant child’s remark, I drove down to South Beach to spend the evening my Rachel, who was in town for the weekend with her dad and brothers.  While I already knew that one never has a dull moment when going out with Rachel, little did I know what would be in store for me.  First, we headed to the South Beach outpost of Danny Myer’s hugely successful Shake Shack.  We sat outside in the cool evening eating burgers and fries while I introduced Rachel to my love, Loni Love, on my iPod.  From there, we strolled up and down the always-exciting Lincoln Road and wandered into a rather eclectic vintage shop.  While there, Rachel tried on a very revealing (not sure if that’s the word that properly describes it, but that’s the word I’m sticking with) corset, while I tried on an old Burberry’s rain hat.  Then things got kinky when Rachel tried to get me to try on this:

In case you’re not sure as to what it is, let me fill you in: it’s a pair of leather shorts with zippers on either side of the crotch for “easy access.”  While the thought of wearing leather shorts was an immediate turn off, what really grossed me out was the fact that someone’s gentiles had touched that entire thing and that’s not exactly something I would want to put on, while still wearing my pants, and maybe a hazmat suit.

As the day in Miami came to a close, I was then faced with the realization that my stay in Florida was also coming to an end and the arduous task of returning to Virginia was fast approaching.  The question was how to get home because Dr. No was saying hell no to driving, mother was not prepared mentally to do the trip again and neither would allow me to do it alone, which is perfectly understandable.  So, my options were as follows: leave the Audi and everything that couldn’t fit into my suitcases and do the drive back to Virginia in May, convince mother that the Audi had to come home immediately and force her to take the drive with me or the hail marry pass: let me take the Auto Train (LINK) home.  Amazingly, she gave in and let me do the Auto Train, but only after going through a list of about two-hundred reasons as to why it’s not safe/why I’ll get shot onboard.  The list was so long that my initial departure date of Tuesday, the 10^th of January, was pushed back to Wednesday because a certain someone was going absolutely insane over the fact that I would even consider this option.  Yet, on Wednesday, the trip was approved and after a brief stop in Winter Park to see Justin and my friend, Jackie, it was a twenty-minute drive up to Sanford to board the train to Virginia.

Unlike traditional Amtrak trains, which could use a huge revamp in order to better compete with the great railways of Europe, the Auto Train is essentially its own separate railroad within the mighty Amtrak.  The people who work on the train only work on the Auto Train, the stations are exclusively for the Auto Train and the entire experience is one that can only be found on the Auto Train.  Despite being located in a rather grimy, somewhat dilapidated area, the Sanford departure point is actually very convenient because of its close proximity to Orlando.  Once you arrive, you’re car is issued a number which is used to identify it upon arrival in Lorton.  From there, it’s straight to the valet who takes your car from that point on while you and the two bags per person that you’re allowed to take with you head inside the recently renovated terminal for check-in.  They’re very strict about time and anyone not checked-in for the train by 15h0 is not allowed to board because they have to position the auto cars onto the track and connect them to the passenger cars for an on time departure.  I booked a roomette, which seats two people without a bathroom, but offers the privacy that an ordinary seat doesn’t offer.  Plus, with the roomette and cabins, you get a real bed at night to sleep in, which I was told means you actually get to sleep by my fellow passengers at the pre-departure wine and cheese tasting in the lounge car.  My sleeping car attendant, David, welcomed me aboard and showed me to my upper roomette and told me when dinner would be served.  Then, about ten minutes ahead of schedule, we pulled out of a nippy Florida and began our sixteen-hour, thirty-minute journey to Lorton, which is located in Northern Virginia.

About two hours into the ride, dinner was served in the dining car on china and white linen tablecloths.  I was seated with two other passengers in my car who were also traveling alone in roomettes and were much more experienced in traveling aboard the Auto Train than I was.  For dinner, I had the Beef Tenderloin with a baked potato and steamed vegetables followed by a massive chocolate cake with the biggest scoop of vanilla ice cream I have ever seen in my life.  While the food well exceeded all my expectations, the wine wasn’t exactly the greatest on earth.  In fact, I opted out of having any at dinner because I was so disappointed from the wine in the pre-departure wine and cheese tasting.  By the time I returned to my cabin, the sun had set and so I changed into my pajamas (yes, I wear pajamas) as we zipped through Georgia.  Unaware of the movie being shown on the train, I rented Annie Hall on iTunes, which was good because the projector wasn’t working that night.  Around 21h30, David came to make up my bed for the evening.  Just before closing my eyes, I remember peeking out of my curtain to see a sign that said Charleston, South Carolina on it.

Despite being a very smooth ride, I ironically woke up three times during the night because we had stopped moving; once because by law, the engineers can only work twelve hour shifts and had to be changed out in Florence, South Carolina of all places (so ironic because that’s where we usually stay when making the drive down), and the other two times because we had to let a CSX train pass (CSX owns the rail lines on which Amtrak operates in the South and therefore they have seniority).  At 6h15 and somewhere just outside of Richmond, the conductor made his first announcement saying that breakfast was being served on a first-come, first-serve basis and that we were an hour ahead of schedule.  The mood in the dining car was a bit more subdued than at dinner as not everyone was fully awake.

When I returned from my continental breakfast that included juice, coffee, assorted muffins/bagels, and cereal, my roomette was already made up for seating again.  I opted out of taking a shower as I didn’t have any shower sandals to wear, but someone with whom I sat at breakfast said it was very relaxing and kind of neat, which I imagine it is.  Then, at 8h30 on the dot, our journey came to an end as we pulled into the Lorton station.  Within a matter of minutes, the journey ended and I was faced with the fact that it was no longer 57 and sunny outside.  Instead, it was more like 29 and cloudy; I immediately considered just taking the train back to Florida and not leaving for another week.  But just as I thought of doing that, my car’s number was called and two minutes later, I was on I-95 South headed for home.

Despite costing around $400 with the emergency insurance, which mother insisted I have in case the people at the station seemed “sketchy,” the trip wasn’t that much more expensive than driving once you factor in the stops for food, gas and the hotel.  Plus, there’s much less wear-and-tear on your car and your body.  Looking back on the experience, there were a few things I will be doing differently this coming December when I take the train south this time.  For starters, I’ll pack much less food because Grace saw the wrong menu online and feared for the worst.  Next, I’ll have my bed made up earlier so I can get to sleep sooner because the train does lull you to sleep quite easily.  Next time, I’ll definitely bring my own travel pillow because the one provided by Amtrak was a bit too hard for my liking, and finally, I will definitely bring shower sandals so I can bathe while onboard a train

On the whole, the trip exceeded all my wildest expectations and was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in my life.  Everyone from David, my cabin attendant, to the server in the dining car who told a man at breakfast to eat more than a muffin because she was going to have to drive on I-95 as well and didn’t want him on that road without a real meal made the trip so memorable, as did the people I met along the way.  The conversations with these fellow passengers, despite their vagueness in order to not give too much of one’s personal life away to complete strangers, was genuinely interesting.  One of the two people with whom I had dinner told us about the log cabin he had built for his now late-wife and of the experience he had building it.  The other person at the table started us on a twenty-minute chat about our dogs and how we love them so.  Sure it was fluff, but it was interesting nonetheless.  I highly recommend the Auto Train to anyone who doesn’t feel like driving to Florida, being raped by the TSA or to anyone who wants to experience a way of travel that to many has long since been forgotten.

My time home was spent visiting my grandmother, seeing Grace and Annie before they left to return back to UVa, resting, and preparing myself for the upcoming semester in Italy.  I did finally get to see The Social Network, and I must say that I was not impressed at all with the movie.  Yes, the writing is exceptional and Aaron Sorkin is a fantastic writer, but the movie just didn’t do anything for me.  I don’t know if it was the built-up hype or what, but I was not impressed at all, which I’ll admit was a bit disappointing.  Grace, meanwhile, has been faced with a bit of a dilemma as her Hitler for a landlord is not thrilled with Henry Flagler’s ever-increasing size and is now on the hunt for a new residence in Charlottesville.  Justin has returned to the daily grind of homework, paper and parties at Rollins, even misleading campus security into thinking he was on acid because he was running outside nearly naked looking for his phone at 4 in the morning last week.  Ah, to be young and carefree…

Last night, I landed in New York and had an absolutely amazing dinner at Pastis, which even made Andrew jealous because he can’t get that delicious burger in LA!  The mousse au chocolat was so rich that even I, someone who has never before not finished a desert in my life, couldn’t finish the whole thing.  Plus, for wine lovers, I recommend a carafe of the pinot noir that they have by the glass because it was beyond words.  This morning, I braved the below 0 with the wind chill weather for a four-mile run in the park, which was BEYOND exhilarating, despite wearing seven layers!  Then I spent some time getting last minute items before heading of to MoMa for an hour where I saw this really great exhibit on kitchens from the 1940s and 1950s.  It was so neat seeing the “kitchens of tomorrow” and all the very interesting innovations they had.  There was also a Warhol film exhibit, but seeing a guy’s facial expressions while receiving a blow job didn’t really do a lot to get me to stay for very long.

So now, as I come to the end of this conversation while seated at Newark waiting for my flight for Rome,  it has just dawned on me that the next time I sit down for one of our conversations, I’ll be in the land of wine women and song, with an emphasis on the first two, regaling y’all with tales of my journey to Italy and the start of my semester in Siena.  Fino alla prossima volta…

Ciao,

-JD

PS: Congratulations to Annie and Sarah on being made members of the Tri Delta sorority at UVa!

Like a Missed Period, I Guess I’m Late!

Well, Christmas is over and the child molester flew back to the North Pole to rest and prepare for yet another month of molesting next year.  Meanwhile, I enjoyed the sales that come with the most popular holiday of the year, so I guess thanks are in order?  So in the time between now and our last “chat” together, I moved out of my apartment in Charlottesville (oh what a joy!) in only two car-loads, which I must say was impressive considering how much stuff I own.  Additionally, mother and I did the trip to Florida this time (Field Marshall Rommel lucked out) and it was um… bizarre.

Unlike Field Marshall Rommel, who only allowed me to stop so he could deal with his “problem” (a problem that I’m sure Flomax could fix, but that’s just a personal opinion), mother insisted we stop on a regular basis.  Interestingly, every time we stopped, we were near an outlet mall.  Gee, what a coincidence!  When we arrived at the “lovely” Courtyard by Marriott in Florence, South Carolina, mother slept in her clothes for fear that the sheets hadn’t been washed and that we would contract bedbugs.  It’s been over a week and nothing yet has happened to me so I rest my case.  The drive itself was a bit more verbal than the previous ones, which have usually consisted of Rommel telling me he needed to use that facilities every hour or so and little else, but it was okay, on the whole.

There was one minor incident when he reached Florida, however.  After visiting an outlet mall in St. Augustine, we go to get gas.  Well, mother has some credit card that she has to call before going out of town (literally, she has to call before using it in Williamsburg, which is an hour away from our house) to let them know that she would be using it.  I have only done that when I’ve traveled abroad.  Meanwhile, we arrive at the gas station and my American Express was declined, so we drove to the one across the street where it is declined again.  I immediately received an email saying there were fraudulent charges on my account because of gas station charges along I-95, which is odd because this was only my THIRD drive from Virginia to Florida!

So we pull into Palm Beach and the next day, we’re on Worth Avenue and spending like we’ve sold the house for cash!  Mother’s card for which she had to call and give prior notice was declined due to “extremely high prices” being charged to her card in more than one store, which lead her to have a mini-meltdown because it was kind of embarrassing.   My cousin Kevin arrived and was dragged to see The King’s Speech immediately after landing by mother and me.  He thought it was, “well produced;”  I think Colin Firth’s performance is going to win him the OSCAR he deserved last year in A Single Man.

Now, while all of this was happening, G-d sneezed while doing a line of coke and it blanketed the entire East Coast in feet upon feet of “snow,” which, aside from leading to a sudden drop in the price of the powdery drug (rich, prep-school kids around the nation rejoice:

(Yes, I do realize how fitting it is that Mick Jagger and David Bowie, super druggies, are singing this song; hell, they looked coked up in this video)), meant that flights weren’t exactly running on schedule.  So mother’s flight is supposed to leave at some inhumane hour on Sunday morning and I had to drive her to the airport only to basically leave the airport because it was undoubtedly canceled.  This was also a major glitch in my usually perfect Day After Christmas gift shopping because there’s no telling as to how many great items I missed out on by not being at the doors to Neimans or Saks at 8h0 like usual.  To make things worse, I ran into this “sweet, little old grandma” with whom I fought over a tie a few years back and to my astonishment, she was still breathing!  She had taken a tie out of my hand and when I told her I was buying it, she laughed with amusement while saying that I was too young to need a tie to wear (I was sixteen and attending a prep school that required one to be worn every day at the time) and I told her that it didn’t matter if she bought it because no one would be alive to wear it by the end of the day (harsh, I know, but Starbucks wasn’t open yet and I was on the backend of a sugar high).  She then saw me outside of Neimans talking on the phone to my cousin and overheard me say that I was just going to look at the Ferragamo ties on sale and then leave so what does she do?  She bought every single Ferragamo tie on sale, EVEN the duplicates!  When we saw each other in Neimans on Sunday, it went through the following stages: calm, shock, double take to make sure it was her, a “DAMN SHE LOOKS READY TO KICK THE BUCKET” thought, a glance from her, hate in her eyes, mutual stink eyes, and then back to being asked, “why aren’t you looking for my size?” by mother.  This video does a good job of encapsulating it all:

Monday came around and I still couldn’t get Southwest to just force her on the plane.  FINALLY, she gets on the plane on Tuesday, only after yelling at me for being late because I had to put oil in my car after driving it to Orlando/Winter Park the night before to see my friend Tasleem before she goes back to Canada.  When we pulled up to Fort Lauderdale International Airport, she turns to me as says, “Don’t drive too far away in case I miss the plane” EVEN THOUGH I GOT HER THERE EARLY!  Y’all, I got out of there so fast because I could not bring myself to have to drive back to Fort Lauderdale again on Wednesday (I had plans).

Winesday (yes, just like the Today Show‘s cocktail hour with permanent drunk, Kathy Lee Gifford, and FORMER award-winning journalist-turned-babysitter to a drunk, Hoda Kotb calls  Wednesday) was spent with everyone’s Jewish grandmothers in their winter homes in BOCA! with Andrew, which as y’all can imagine, was a spectacle.  There simply is no other word to describe what happens when the two of us are together.  We told off a security guard at the Boca Raton Resort and Club, over-ate, went ice-skating on marble floors with wooden-soled shoes (I nearly broke my neck, which has it’s benefits because then I could sue the life out of the hotel for having a way-too-slipery floor and then never have to work a day in my life, so DAMMIT WHY DID I HOLD ON TO THE RAILING?  I COULD BE IN A HOSPITAL WITH PUDDING AND A SPOT ON OPRAH ALL READY TO GO!), multiple indecisions over whether to take a boat or to wait for a shuttle, complaints about children, BROS, spectacular views of BOCA!, a bad ending with the Focker clan (musical condoms?), saw this poster: , got rejections from about five restaurants, had a waitress who must have been having her time of the month that night, ateLike a Missed Period, I Guess I’m Late! seafood restaurant with a view of man-made lake, and thrown out partridge and a pear tree!

In case none of y’all got that, Little Fockers might actually be the worst movie I’ve ever seen, save for the Barbara Streisand and Dustin Hoffman scenes, which were either about sex or making jokes at the expense of Jews, both of which are usually necessary!  We had a really good dinner at the seafood restaurant City Fish Market, which was where I discovered my new drink of the moment, the Rue Royale, which is delicious and goes down rather smoothly.

It was Thursday though that really made this the best end to the best year of my life.  We went to Donald’s little shack in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, for lunch.  Y’all, it’s stunning.  There are oriental rugs outside, which I hope get put away when it rains, but still.  We ate by the pool oceanside, since Andrew said that the other pool area was basically for old people (he was right since the youngest person there was on oxygen I think).  While eating a delicious lunch, we spotted the heirs to the hairplug’s fortune, Donald Jr. and JVanaka!  Well, Don Jr. looks just like daddy (which is not good), but JVANKA is amazing!  Yes, JVanka is a single unith that refers to Jared Kuschner and his gorgeous (and now Jewish, so in case they get divorced I have a shot) wife, Ivanka Trump Kuschner, who does not have that fat, chipmunk face in real life, by the way.  Here’s my first question about JVANKA: HOW IS JVANKA NOT EXPECTING A CHILD YET?  I mean really, if you were married to either one, wouldn’t you be in bed shtupping 24/7?  I’m just sayin’.  The only reason to not want to have children so soon might be out of fear that it could end up looking like Grandpa Donald, whose youngest son, Baron (aged five), will be an uncle when this child is born.  Getting back on track, Jvanka went off to the tennis courts and Andrew and I waited ten minutes before following.  Leonardo couldn’t have sculpted better legs (personal opinion of course).  Plus, girl is smart because she had the tennis pro playing for her.  However, here’s where Jared messed up: he was beating his wife at tennis (strike one) at her father’s club (strike two)  while staying at the same club (strike three).  Regardless, it was a huge relief to know that despite looking like a chipmunk in photos, Jvanka’s face is not fat in real life, which make Maggie and me happy (Maggie, a friend of mine whom I met through Andrew looks to Jvanka as a role model, nothing more)!

After leaving Club Hair Plug, which was immaculate and showed few signs of being a shrine to el Donaldo as I expected, Andrew and I headed up to Worth Avenue for a simple stroll around and then dinner at Michael McCarty’s, which was great as usual (their macaroni and cheese always hits the spot).  This was a sad day because Andrew and I were faced with the fact that our daily talking time, which is probably more than what it should be, is about to be extremely restricted starting in January since we will have a nine-hour time difference between Siena and LA.  Somehow, I feel we will find a way to overcome this.

So in the middle of finals week, Grace welcomed a new member to her family (Maury Povich, what am I?

Thank you).  Weighing in at just over eight pounds, I’d like to introduce Grace’s new baby boy, Henry Flagler Wilkins:

That’s right, it’s a great dane.  Rachel said she can’t wait for the day when she can replace her human body pillow with HFW while I can’t wait for the day when we can rent him out for birthday parties and pretend that he’s a pony who just has some spots.  Grace also managed to break her arm following a lovely evening of karaoke.  I decided to stay in that night and missed all of the festivities involved.

Sadly, this holiday season has not been without its painful moments.  Justin’s grandfather passed away on Christmas Day in his home in New Jersey.  From what I’ve heard about him, he seems like a lovely person who I know will be greatly missed.  On the bright side, Justin said that at least he now had a chance to wear his new, vintage three-piece suit from Gant!  Also, I managed to completely corrupt the once intellectual Justin since he now loves my love, Wendy Williams and has watched her show multiple times this month.  So Justin, 

Well, to wrap up what has without a doubt been the best year of my life, I just want to wish y’all a very happy new year and let’s all hope that 2011 is just as fun as 2010!  On a more serious note, let’s also hope that Barbara Walters remembers that she was once a distinguished journalist who would never bring herself to interview the cast of Jersey Shore or Justin Bieber.  Worse, she would absolutely NEVER learn to Dougie:

From my lounge chair oceanside in Palm Beach receiving tweets from @YesImWaspy and getting lost in my book, The Widow Clicquot, until next time in 2011…

-JD

PS: In the final Basil Watch of 2010, Rommel sent me this photo of my little plants just a few weeks before they’re to be moved into their new home, a terra-cotta pot:

And the Holidays are Officially Here Which Means I Can Finally Blast Christmas Music Nonstop!

Did I mention I was Jewish?  Anyway, Happy Belated Thanksgiving!  I know mine was just a tad bit more of a fuck-up than usual, so hopefully it was the same for y’all.  So Justin decided that since he couldn’t kiss-ass his way into the Kennedy Compound at Hyannis Port this year, he’d travel to the “Real South” for the first time (yes, Florida is the southern-most state in the Nation, but with everyone’s bubbe and zayde on the Sunshine Shuttle between Zabar’s and Boca, combined with the extreme insanity of the state:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

and

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Florida is basically the Northern-most State in Union, while Maine, with its lobsters (they have them in Florida too), basically hillbilly-esque residents (not all, but most) and the Bush Family Compound in Kennbunkport (Florida, Florida, Florida), basically should be below Georgia (which would make more sense since both states are a little… special:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I rest my case.)

As I was saying, Justin made his first venture into the South this past week.  Since there was obscene traffic getting home, we stopped in Williamsburg so Justin could play hopscotch around horse manure in the dark while strolling down Duke of Gloucester Street.  We then had an absolutely fantastic dinner at the Fat Canary, which The New York Times said was the place to eat when it did its “36 Hours in Williamsburg” article in June of 2009.  It has to be one of the best restaurants in the state of Virginia and has turned the once unrivaled Trellis into a tourist-only freak-show complete with a kid’s menu and food not worth its price.

Following dinner and our stroll along Duke of Gloucester Street, Justin and I climbed back into Old Faithful and drove home to Virginia Beach.  On Wednesday, I took Justin to see all of the historic sites of Norfolk including the Battleship Wisconsin (from the stoplight), the Moses Myers House, my grandparents, the Chrysler Museum, ODU, their house, our Temple, the original Norfolk Academy, Ghent, the Virginia Zoo, they have original Westinghouse appliances that still work, the Hunter House, Scope, Chrysler Hall, the Harrison Opera House, and because the MacArthur Memorial was closed, I took Justin to see MacArthur Center.  In addition, I took Justin to Doumar’s, the Norfolk institution that is more important than just about every other site in the city.  By judging the small stain on his jacket after lunch, it’s clear to say that Justin was more than satisfied by his visit.

Then came Thanksgiving, which started off alright, but then it became painfully obvious that Al Roker had taken too many crazy pills and that should have been a sign right there that I should have just gone back to bed and slept through the day.

So mother imprisoned Justin in the kitchen and basically chained him to the counter so he could peal vegetables for her and help with the sweet potato pies.  I, in addition to making desert, was forced into slave labor so we could have the haricots verts with crispy fried shallots and whatever else needed to be done.  Justin got to see a side of me he never thought he would ever be fortunate to witness: me being domesticated, cleaning dishes, cooking, screaming at people for being incompetent (okay, so he’s seen that before).  The table was even a diva experience as mother was unable to find the right table cloth she wanted to use and, as usual, made it my fault somehow.  She looked like she was on the verge of tears when the turkey came out a tad bit overdone, but I reminded her that the only thing people remember is desert and that it doesn’t matter how the turkey tastes.  This year, I made three deserts: a French chocolate bark, an apple crisp and a vanilla armagnac ice cream (yes, all three are Ina Garten recipes; I love her because her recipes are designed for humans, unlike a particular nutcase:

Prison did wonders for her!).  Sadly, due to technical difficulties with ice cream maker, which was acting like an incompetent fool, it wasn’t done in time.  Twice during the course of dinner, we seemed to lose my Uncle, who lives for his sports and just went away unnoticed for a good ten-fifteen minutes.  Grace, as usual, came over, having spent part of her day out hunting for ducks.  She was kind enough to send a photo:

My cousin Kevin, crazy person, informed us that he had been online from 23h0 the night before until 7h0 Thursday morning shopping the sales before sleeping until 16h0.  After dinner, he went to Wal-Mart and Radio Shack before collapsing in a bed.  Black Friday was spent showing Justin the oceanfront’s sites: the boardwalk, the Dairy Queen that puts on a firework display for the 4th of July it’s so popular and many other touristy areas before getting dinner at Mizuno.  We then joined Grace and my cousin Holly to see the film Love and Other Drugs, which was a huge letdown.  Let me break it down: two hours of random, pointless sex (not that there’s anything wrong with it), a rich people pajama/sex party, a great plug for Viagra, and then trying to find a plot in the final ten minutes of the film.  This was a huge letdown for all of us, who were all expecting so much more from Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway (Grace was sad that Anne Hathaway wasn’t as bitchy as usual).  The film just lacked any sort of direction, it was pointless, boring, made no sense whatsoever, and as a classmate of mine said this morning when agreeing that the film was bad, «At least someone else paid for my ticket or else I would have demanded a refund.»

Saturday morning began with brunch with Grace and Annie at Mary’s, a «favorite» local diner before going back to their house to watch Virginia Tech destroy UVa.  Justin got to meet  Walter, which was purely wonderful.  Meanwhile, I took this photo of Annie, to which she responded, «That’s why the boys like me!»

Following this, Justin got to go walk on the beach, which was FREEZING, but nice:

After this, it was time to head to Richmond so Justin could go where no sane person has ever gone before: a Greyhound bus station.  It turns out that he has completely lost all sense of sanity since he’s been out of school and didn’t understand why I was yelling at him for even considering taking a bus to Manhattan in the first place.  He wanted to get some reading done and thought this would be the only way possible.  IT’S CALLED AMTRAK YOU INCOMPETENT FOOL!  There aren’t fights that break out on a train, you don’t have to sit in fear the whole time worrying that you might get shot and there are no changes in DC.  Instead, you get two power outlets, a café car, a footrest, and a pillow/blanket!

Grace spent her Saturday night in a deer stand, but sadly turned up with no venison for me to cook.  I returned to Charlottesville to find my basil basically dead:

I’ve brought them back to life though:

And yes, I’m reading «True Prep,» which Justin, it mentions my beloved Tiffany & Co. monogramed belt buckle that you said was hideous as being very preppy, so as Jim Cramer would say, BOOYAH!

Finally this evening,  Andrew spent his Thanksgiving with his family (<3 them) in BOCA and he sent me fifteen photos from inside Donald Trump’s Florida club/private hair plug treatment center, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.  I thought I’d pass a few on:

Ladies, if that pose doesn’t make y’all swoon, frankly I won’t blame you because that is kind of a scary sight.  And yes Grace, I can see he has a large bulge; they’re called socks.

I wasn’t aware that you could earn Six Stars, especially since the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences only has Five Stars on its logo.  I’m looking into this and will report back later.

So, clearly it’s been a freak week, but as Cyber Monday turns into the Tuesday after Cyber Monday, and Hanukkah is now less than twenty-four hours away (seriously, it’s starting this early?  I mean if we had moved it up a week, we could have done latkes and turkey on the same day (and I bet that would go well with the apple sauce and Costco caviar)!  Andrew and I wish to inform whatever idiot that decided Hanukkah could start this early in the season that we’re not prepared!  I’m not supposed to buy Wikileaks his annual Brooks Brothers tie with his Brooks Brothers MasterCard (which is only used when making purchases at Brooks Brothers I might add) until after New Years, when I get it for over 60% and am fighting little old ladies on Worth Avenue who tell me that I’m too young to need a tie and then I have to remind them that they’ll probably be dead before they get home!  What?  It’s part of the tradition.  Besides, I don’t even know what I want for my four gifts.  All our goyim friends get an extra month practically to pick out their thirty-six presents, decorate their trees, bake the cookies for the pedophile, and listen to Christmas music while we’re stuck watching oil burn in a candle for eight nights (and they say it’s wrong to stereotype)!  Anyway, until next time…

-JD

PS: Congratulations to Jean and Lily for managing to avoid their government-mandated fondle at Newark and for both making it to France safely!  Justin, on the other hand, experienced something like this when flying to Richmond last Tuesday:

Justin Shaved Off His Beard and is Currently Sporting an 80’s Porn Star Mustache

For this reason alone, he’s not providing me with a photo.  However, in positive Justin news, he has thankfully decided to no longer pursue his weeklong interest in architecture, meaning he once again plans to go into the legal profession, as planned.

So this past week was dominated by exams and doing homework so that I could continue my annual tradition of spending the final weekend of October visiting friends at other universities.  Following two years of traveling here to Charlottesville, it seemed kind of pointless to just drive to Grace’s and stay the night on her sofa, so instead, I decided to drive down to Durham to pay a surprise visit to Andrew, who thought I was at the March to Keep Fear Alive in DC.  So let’s discuss how I got to Durham.

It all really began Friday night when I purchased my costume for my Saturday Night Out With… outing at Duke which I’ll get to later.  I was told I had to have a costume and due to the fact that it was FREEZING this weekend, I decided that the pantless-Risky Business costume may not have been the best idea and with very little time to come up with anything new, I decided to just go as Andrew.  The costume wasn’t too hard, since it really only required me to buy a plaid shirt, but it was the wig that proved to be a problem for me.  My Cary Grnat-esque hair looks nothing like Andrew’s perfectly coiffed hair, so a wig was required in order to get the full effect of going dressed as Andrew.  Unfortunately, the only thing remotely close to Andrew’ hair color was that of a Hippie’s hair, which is much too long for it to be Andrew’s, but it worked.  I headed straight for Old Navy to get the check shirt, which was not as easy as it should have been.  Apparently, they had had some sale earlier in the month sold most of their Small and Medium-sized shirts so I had to strip the mannequin in order to get the one I wanted.  So I asked one of the sales ladies if she could help me take the shirt off the mannequin, and while we’re in the process of stripping the mannequin, she begins to have a full conversation with the mannequin!  Y’all, I laugh at just about anything, but I somehow managed to not say anything for the first time in my life; instead, I just watched as the saleslady apologized to the mannequin for having to remove its shirt, promising that she would get it a new one before the night was over.  The fact that I made it about five more minutes without laughing was a miracle (my eyes were watering as I tried to contain my laughter though by the end).  After I regained composure, I headed to Grace’s apartment because the wig had to be styled properly so it more accurately portrayed Andrew’s hair.  Plus, anyone who has ever watched The Real Housewives of HOTlanta knows that «musical sensation» and super diva Kim Zolciak, whose hit single, Tardy for the Party is still absolutely hysterical in my opinion (and so much better than COUNTESS LuAnn‘s Money Can’t Buy You Class), never just puts the wig on and goes out.  No, instead she has her high-heel wearing stylist come over to style the wig first.  So Grace managed to turn this fine diva wig:

into this:

So on Saturday afternoon, I climbed into my car and headed off for Durham.  So, Google Maps and my BlackBerry’s map both told me that the shortest way to get there was by driving down Route 29 and then getting on Route 501, which seemed easy enough.  So, let’s describe what the Audi and I saw.  Immediately, there are nothing but beautiful, foliage-covered mountains/hills (whatever y’all want to call them is fine with me) and I’m on a winding road in the middle of them.  As we approach the end of hour one of the projected three hour, thirty-two minute drive, things began to get a little bit funky.  First, the Audi and I pass a diner called «Kuntry Kitchen» which just looked so appetizing.  Two miles down the road on the opposite side of the street is what really did it for me though: a Jehovah’s Witness place of worship? (Sorry, I’m Jewish and I’m writing this while seated at a table with an Episcopal (Grace) and a hybrid (Rachel is part Jewish, part Gentile so she’s a hybrid).  I had never seen one of these places before so that was a bit of a culture shock to say the least.  At roughly the same time though, something else happened that was really kind of scary, because just as we’re approaching «Kuntry Kitchen,» all the foreign cars begin to disappear and it’s now just me and the Audi versus the big three, plus some tractors on the road, which by the way has now a one-lane in each direction legit country road, for the next hour and fifteen minutes.  During this time, I’ll admit that I was afraid to play my Kanye music altogether for fear that I would somehow attract even more attention than I’m sure I already was for not being inside a car that was built here in America.  I passed through a few little towns with old-fashioned ice-cream stands and grocery stores that probably make the Piggly Wiggly look nice.  As I approached Lynchburg, I began to see cars from the Asian brands popping up here and there, but this was still very much so Ford and Chevy country.  Then, about forty-five minutes later, I saw my first German car since some place called North Garden.  It was  navy blue BMW 550i heading in the opposite direction.  From there, things began to get a bit more… suburban and by the time I crossed into the state of North Carolina, I felt as though I was on some quiet road in middle America.

I pulled onto the grounds of Duke at approximately 18h15 and found myself outside the door to Andrew’s dorm just ten minutes later.  After being friends with Andrew for nearly five and a half years now, I had begun to figure out that he usually heads off for dinner at around 18h30, so I figured I’d be there just in time.  On Saturday, he decided to order in and had just gotten back to his dorm when I called!  This would happen to me.  To say that Andrew was surprised is probably an understatement.  It was really more of a cross between excited, horrified, shock, disbelief by the fact that I would drive three and a half hours to get there, and anger because I didn’t tell him.  So, after he finished his dinner, we drove (because I have a car and Andrew doesn’t, although his reason for why is rather genius.  When asked why he won’t get a car, Andrew says, «That’s for a driver to do, not me.»  We’ll get to his driving skills later) to a lovely French restaurant called Vin Rouge, which was about as close to a parisian bistro as one can get in Durham, North Carolina, which is actually known for its restaurants.  Andrew treated me to my glass of Bordeaux, Croque-Madame (I’ll be honest, I enjoy eating the egg; plus, mother has some diva complex with eggs so it keeps her from eating my meal when I order it with her) and my just okay apple bread pudding.  He just got dessert, which was the chocolate mousse; they deliver it in a large bowl and then scoop out four large balls of the mousse and place them in a bowl.  It could have used some creme-fraiche if you asked me, but it was still really good (I had a bite).

After dinner, we then drove to Whole Foods where we purchased a bottle of Veuve because Andrew wanted me to saber the bottle before I headed out on my Saturday Night Out With… for the evening.  We bought the bottle and on our way back to Andrew’s dorm, I let him drive my car around campus (TO THOSE OF MY READERS WHO HAPPEN TO KNOW MOTHER OR MY LITTLE LENNIE BREZHNEV, PLEASE DO NOT LET THEM KNOW THAT SOMEONE NOT INSURED WAS DRIVING MY CAR!).  Even though Andrew rarely, if ever, drives, he’s a good little driver and I’m not worried at all having him in the driver’s seat of my car.  So after we returned to his dorm, Andrew realizes that he doesn’t have a knife, so now we have to go find a damn knife at 21h30 on a Saturday night… not a whole lot of places to look.

Eventually, we give up and find ourselves in the library because I just want to see what type of people hang out in the library at close to 22h0 on the Saturday before Halloween.  While we didn’t find the knife, we did come across this green dude on the second floor.  I immediately had the church giggles when I saw this guy.  Also, I blame my use of the word dude on the amount of time I’ve been spending with Annie recently because that’s one of her favorite words.

So we departed the library after this lovely experience and returned to Andrew’s dorm still knifeless.  So Andrew came up with the brilliant idea that we’re going to saber the bottle with a pair of scissors.  As y’all can imagine, this didn’t exactly work.  So instead, I opened it the old-fashioned way and saw a life goal of mine be fulfilled: Andrew drank his first carbonated beverage!  This is not a joke either; until Saturday night, Andrew had never consumed any form of a carbonated beverage, which is in stark contrast to some people I know who are capable of consuming entire cases of carbonated beverages in one day.  Andrew, I speak for everyone who knows you, when I say that I’m very proud of you and I promise you that we will saber a bottle of champagne next time we see each other in person.

On Sunday morning, Andrew and I had brunch at Rue Clair, where we started with beignets before moving on to an omelette for Andrew and the french toast with a side of bacon for me.  Andrew and i are a rare breed in college as we both refuse to drink coffee, so our drink du jour was freshly-squezzed orange juice.  After brunch, we journeyed to Super Target for an hour-long shopping experience.  We basically went up and down most of the aisles in the store looking at some of the dumbest things imaginable.  While going down the alcohol aisle, I noticed this:

Last I checked, grape juice doesn’t count as an alcoholic beverage.

Following the trip to Target, I dropped Andrew off at his dorm and took off on my way back to Charlottesville.  This time, I took the interstate all the way back.  Before continuing, I want to thank Andrew for letting me stay with him on Saturday night and for the wonderful birthday present.  Next time though, you’re visiting me!

This week’s Saturday Night Out With… will be posted later today, but let me just say that I had experience that I will never forget (this is  good thing).

So on Tuesday, Mario Cuomo was elected the new Governor to the State of New York, but my man, Jimmy McMillian, won 39,939 votes, or 1% of the vote, according to the New York Times.  Following him was former New York City Madam, Kristin Davis who only won 22,879 votes, or 0.6% of the votes.  If Eliot Spitzer had endorsed her, I bet she could have done better.  But I’m okay with this because on Tuesday, Jimmy McMillian released an album entitled, what else, «The Rent Is Too Damn High, Volume 1.»  I bought the whole thing and to be honest, I kind of like a few songs a lot, especially the song entitled My Place, in which JM basically talks about wanting to have sex with women at his place.  While ordinarily I would find this sort of behavior from someone running for a political office outside of the House of Representatives to be horrifying, at least we know going into this that he’s a horny guy and we don’t end up having incidents like these:

Though this last one doesn’t really count because come on, he’s Italian so can you really blame him for being a horny man?

Here’s the song so y’all can hear how wonderful it is:

Finally, I’d like to first wish a belated Happy Twenty-First Birthday to Nathaniel and an early Happy Nineteenth Birthday to Annie!  Next, I’d like to apologize for not posting this until today.  I started writing this Monday night but didn’t finish, had a paper to write Tuesday and I got really close to finishing this last night, but I just fell asleep.  It’s been a busy week.  I’m gonna wrap up now so I can start working on this week’s Saturday Night Out With… The Birthday Boy Who Gets All the Girls… and Guys.  Until next time…

-JD

PS: In basil watch, they’re actually growing and getting big, which is amazing if you asked me because I never thought they’d last this long.