Christmas Ads in August?

Well crap! I kid you not, today we saw the first blip of Christmas ads on the TV! Miserable weather and sweltering heat in the middle of August, and Christmas ads are already in our face!

It was Marie Callender's turkey and dressing dinners to be specific. But I expect we'll be seeing the Pillsbury Dough Boy popping up any day now, right?

Honestly this gives me the willies! With these two rotating girlfriends floating in and out of here every-other weekend, who knows what kind of confused and conflicted social season this will be. This house has already been ostracized, to a degree, since the divorce. What now?

Do these women expect to have holiday cocktail parties and sit-down dinners for their friends, to show off their new situation in life? Which has been my experience with all the new comers.

Like suddenly the house will fill up with all kinds of trashy extraordinary people who ask for beer and pizza - and plow into the swimming pool in spite of the fact they didn't bring swim suits. Not too scandalous, right?

Or, if you lay out an exquisite table for these nice folks with eight-or-ten eating utensils and four drinking goblets - red wine, white wine, water and a champagne flute - just stand back and get ready for some good laughs. (Did that sound judgmental?)

The thing is, if these two women can get their party dates straight without intersecting one another, will the caterers be able to accommodate? This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

In self defense I've learned to keep plenty of beer in the wine cellar and frozen pizzas, hamburger patties and buns on hand - in case I need to fire up the grill without any help from caterers. The thought has actually crossed my mind to buy some paper plates and plastic forks, but I'm afraid Nelda, our ancient executive housekeeper, would have a stroke. So I guess it will be frozen pizza served on Flora Danica china, with sterling knives and forks and a linen napkin - served down at the pool to people in their birthday suits. 👀

However, the nice thing about this particular ilk is that they tend to eat pizza and burgers with their fingers, so there's really no need to polish the silver afterward. And they also have a unique and appreciated tendency to help clean up - which lets us get out of here quicker.

Please don't blame me for mentally retreating into more tranquil times (before the divorce) when the Missus would throw a small gala for four-or-five hundred people, all dripping in diamonds and haute couture, fully catered of course - and no one running around butt naked!

Happy Hour, here I come! Thanks for stopping by this evening.

Andrew

The Atlantic asks: "Does Power Cause Brain Damage?"

By way of update, that new blond chickie we nicknamed Cremora hasn't shown up again and we're back to the usual rotation between Splenda and SweetNLow, every-other weekend. So I'm assuming my assumption was right, that she was just a fill-in for a lonely weekend.

For all the super-rich bad boys in this world, there's several highly-secretive international agencies that provide this kind of service for, how shall we put it, personal companionship. Prices can start at ten thousand a night and up, plus air fare and transfers - meaning limos of course. (But you didn't hear any of that from me!)

What's a mystery to us is if any of these lady friends know about each other? We all do our best to cover up tell-tale evidence - changing sheets, airing out rooms and cars to get rid of lingering perfumes, and taking left-behind lingerie straight to the laundry room. But women are so intuitive, are they not? I can't imagine they don't know about each other, or at least suspect something's rotten in Denmark, as Shakespeare might delicately suggest. But then perhaps they choose to ignore it as long as they can get close to the money themselves. (That didn't sound rude or accusative, did it?)

Anyhow, that's not why I'm writing tonight. There was an amusing article in The Atlantic in this month's issue entitled "Does Power Cause Brain Damage". I can't imagine why they came out with that when things are going so smoothly in Washington DC, right?

In any case, it describes how power and money can change and corrupt people over time. And it pretty much covers my two most serious aggravations about the rich and super rich - their arrogance and belittling sense of entitlement - both equating to a total lack of appreciation for anything done for them.

Not to defend them but by way of comprehension, these people are extended in so many ways with multiple homes around the world, with their luxury cars, jets, super yachts, helicopters, haute couture and endless high society obligations, perhaps there's not time to be kind to everyone involved. I get it.

On the other hand, to carry on this kind of lifestyle requires an absolute army of support personnel - personal assistants, personal secretaries, party planners, security companies, body guards, groundskeepers, and house staff - which includes an innocent butler such as moi.

The thing is, these are all legitimate jobs to help them run their crazy lives. They couldn't do it without us, could they? So why then be arrogant? Why then feel so entitled? Specifically, in this house where I work we question why our employer can't pick up his own socks and shoes off the floor, replace batteries in his bedside remote, or even change a roll of toilet paper. Like he's entirely helpless. Those tasks are left up to all the "little people" as the Queen-of-Mean Leona Helmsley might have said.

Somewhere along the path too many rich people seem to lose their humanity. It's like they begin to think of themselves as little gods on the earth, which opens up a whole conversation about the God Complex - where I'm not going tonight and likely never will.

But what they conveniently seem to forget is that it's not about worshiping them or kissing their butts - it's all about the fat paychecks. Otherwise, they can change their own sheets, scrub their own toilets, and kiss their own butts. (Did I say that out loud?)

Here's a link to The Atlantic article. It's an easy and fun read, and sheds some light on how the rich lose their humanity and this great divide between the haves and have-nots.

Thanks for dropping in this evening,

Andrew