Way Down South In Dixie

Hi, y'all -

Dahlings, I am in beautiful North Carolina, where the weather is simply too luscious for words. Rather like moi. Blue cloudless sky, perfect temperature, and so many trees! It is quite startling how many trees they have down here. Miles of them.

"But what," I hear you ask, "is a cosmopolitan to the core such as voux doing in the land of the deeply in-bred?" My dears, I traveled here to visit the most adorable man who has an ENORMOUS...

Basement full of vintage clothing. Now clean your minds out with soap.

Beautiful things, classic things, and also some rather horrendous things from the 8Os that I recoiled from touching. Racks and racks and racks. My assistant gave some ridiculous excuse for not traveling with me (family emergency indeed--is her mother's quadruple bypass surgery really more important than preventing me from touching anything dusty? So I brought a box of latex gloves. I simply THRIVE under duress). The proprietor was simply too divine, waiting on me hand and foot, and a font of information about his wares. And one suspects, heterosexual. Always a rarity in this business, and such a pleasure to run across.

I came away with some fascinating items which I will be listing the instant the limousine deposits me at my fabulous New York home.

One must keep one's horizons broad by leaving even such a wondrous place as Manhattan occasionally, and getting in touch with the peasants. I did that by attending the Dixie Classic Fair, an experience which will have my creamy skin crawling for years to come. When I tell you that the best looking attendants at the fair were the swine in the livestock shed, and I do mean the pigs, you will know what I mean.

At every turn, my senses were assaulted by bad taste. While I was garbed in a beguiling sundress, large yellow picture hat, and moderately high-heeled sandals, all about me were women in ill-fitting lace trimmed camisole tops and bursting short-shorts, and men in witty t-shirts such as "I Don't Have A Drinking Problem. I Drink, I Get Drunk, I Fall Down. No Problem!" or "My Teammate In Duke Lacrosse Raped A Girl And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Riotous, I tell you.

No hair-do was too outdated to be worn by either sex, although the women had the slightest edge, between the peroxide and the backcombing. Plus, many of their "menfolk" wore duck billed caps, some hilariously decked out with fake (I assume) dog poo. Although from the general lack of personal hygiene, it could have been real. Perhaps even their own.

Maybe putting poo on display is a code among these people: "Look what a big'un I did this morning! Gotta love them biscuits!" Who knows?

I took refuge in the agricultural shed, where a tall old man named Virge attempted to take advantage of me near the Large Vegetable exhibit! He was a fairly large vegetable himself, cooing idiocies through his few remaining teeth: "You're a Yankee, but you're not a damn Yankee. You're mighty fine, come on, rub those mamas against me." I tried to struggle in a dignified way, not wishing to give a bad impression of the North.

When fortunately Virge's wife Suzi, a square woman with a block of white hair in a Quacker Factory knock-off, clocked her husband on the back of the head with a sample book of "How To Make Desserts With Honey." I quickly made my escape and ended up in the poultry shed.

To digress: when I was a wee (well, not so wee) girl, I was attacked by a duck at the Central Park Zoo. I thought it would be an excellent idea to take one of her ducklings home. Mother Duck differed, to the tune of using her beak and sharp talons. My nanny beat the feathered terror off with an umbrella. But to this day my flesh crawls at the sight of mallards. There were no ducks in the poultry shed, but the sight and smell of all of those feathers...UGH.

Speaking of people who look like ducks, what is that skinny bitch Nicole Richie up to these days? I knew her adopted father, in the Biblical sense, in his salad days. He must be so embarrassed by her. If you speak to him, let him know all he has to do is pick up his Razor and give me a jingle. Once you've had semi-black, you can never...well, actually, that's not true. Sorry.

Excuse me, my hostess is calling me to late supper...later, dahlings.

Elisa