Several weeks ago I chose not to write about something but Nora Ephron’s blog at the Huffington celeb Joint about her being oh I guess so gushingly deliciously close to casino mogul Steve Wynn’s pushing an elbow accidentally through Picasso’s “Le Reve” brought the something back to mind so I guess I will write about it. Plus I’m not over the damn cold and every time I swallow daggers pierce through my sinuses into my eyes. It’s unpleasant.
Back on October 5th seems there was in Las Vegas (about the time I guess as the elbow through the Picasso incident) a “Most Powerful Women Summit” and I don’t often read the Huffington page but in Bloglines the Fearless in Vegas: The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit headline for some reason caught my eye. Which was a post by Huffington on how wonderful it was for Huffington to look around and see all these fearless women who decided not to be held back by “self-limiting beliefs” and go for the gold (or at least feeling like they really owned the gold they already had).
There were several things in the post that struck me. The premiere one being the below paragraph.
The tone for the event was set at the opening dinner last night, where Nora Ephron read the hilarious chapter about “maintenance” from her best-seller I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, and brought the house down when she got to the part about how, after looking at a bag lady, she realized: “I am only about eight hours a week away from looking exactly like that woman on the street — with frizzled flyaway gray hair I would probably have if I stopped dyeing mine; with a potbelly I would definitely develop if I ate just half of what I think about eating every day; with the dirty nails and chapped lips and mustache and bushy eyebrows that would be my destiny if I ever spent two weeks on a desert island. Eight hours a week and counting.”
Had I just read what I’d believed I’d read? I’ve not read Ephron’s book and I’m not inclined to. Perhaps in the next paragraph Nora went on to say that no, actually, one of the things that kept her from being like the decrepit bag lady with the gray hair and pot belly is the support network (if not sanity) that money provides.
Oh, wait, no, but that’s exactly what she was saying, wasn’t it! Ha ha! If not for her botox and salon money, Nora would look, horrors, just like that hag in the gutter.
Such hilarious, knee-slapping irony that it’s the bag lady who doesn’t watch her diet while Nora makes do on less food! Staying with that for the moment. In Nora’s post My Weekend in Vegas in which she talks about being present at the skewering of the Picasso, in the first paragraph she remarks on staying at The Wynn which has the greatest breakfast buffet, even greater than the Bellagio. The day you die and go to heaven, there will not be a breakfast buffet as good as the one at the Wynn, which is oh too bad for the bag lady, because she’s missed out completely, hasn’t she.
The second paragraph is on dinner at the SW Restaurant named after Steve Wynn, which has the best steak she’s ever had. She then details the Picasso puncture. Then dinner the next day at SW because it’s so damned good you have to go back and they had corn with truffles. And the next day the key lime pie at Joe’s Stone Crab was even better than the key lime pie at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach.
Mmmm-mmm-mmmm. One can only imagine what the baglady with the potbelly gut is dining upon with such relishness that she can’t put a cap on her appetite like Nora. But as it’s not Wynn breakfast buffet worthy, the best in the world, which Nora has managed to push her chair away from before bloating copiously, then it goes without saying that the only reason the bag lady’s in the gutter is because she at some point in her life was unable to muster the morals to fence her animalistic passions with reason and plot her destiny with a discerning eye for guarding against the more dire catastrophe.
Arianna Huffington and Nora Ephron, these are supposed to be the strong fearless women that we’re supposed to imitate, abandoning “self-limiting” beliefs.
No, you’re probably right, I should read Nora Ephron’s chapter on “Maintenance” before remarking on it based on a post made by Huffington on a self-congratulatory talk for the fabulous few femmes at the Most Powerful Summit, a self-congratulatory talk that, y’know, “set the tone” by reminding them all that if not for their moral self restraint and hair dye they’d look like the bag lady on the curb. Nora did probably cushion it with the acknowledgement we should be self-accepting but aren’t. Perhaps she even thought to tuck a $10 note in the bag lady’s hand, or perhaps she didn’t if it was likely to go straight to alcohol. Better to spend the money at the craps table.
Brrrrrr. Shivers. What a power the poor hold over the rich when just the sight of them visits the wealthy with morbid self-reflection on “If not for the grace of money there go I…” Makes much more sense than the old, “If not for the grace of god…” line and certainly packs it all in a nutshell.
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