The Best Books I've Never Read - Until Now

Do you sometimes wonder how it is that after spending a lifetime of reading, you have still missed so many great books. And isn't it a pleasure to finally read them.

Snobbery has been on my mind this week, especially with the two extraordinary posts written by the Duchesse and the fact that I just finished reading Evelina by the incomparable and groundbreaking Fanny Burney. (Seriously, what is all the fuss about Jane Austin? Next to Fanny Burney, and Maria Edgeworth, she is a second rate author.)


I don't consider myself to be an anti-intellectual reverse snob, I see myself as much more of an anti-snob. In terms of material goods, I'm the first one to brag about the fact that I almost never pay retail....and why would I when I work in a wholesale business. Sitting with a stylist from CBS who was on her way to pick up a Kevin Hall dress, I was only so happy to tell her that I just bought a Kevin Hall dress for $19.99 at Ross! Whether with clothes, handbags or jewelry, I do appreciate quality, but I'm not going to overpay just to be able to own a status brand that is overpriced to begin with. My self worth isn't tied up in what I own or where I shop, as it is with materially oriented snobs.


About snobbery as it relates to attitudes, I put little stock in what socio-economic class one was born into, and what schools one attended. Like with the characters in Evelina, I've known people from the wealthiest caste who were unbearable boors and lower middle class people who were equally as bad. I've seen serious snobs in action...and walked away amused thinking that they only impressed themselves, their peers and their sycophants, but not me.


One has to belong to an exclusive group to be a snob, say a group like upper echelon private school graduates or country club members or even members of a royal family. One has to be born into, married into or moneyed into those exclusive groups. But membership in such groups only matters if a person wants to included. Fortunately, after spending time around people with real money, new and old, private island-private jet-private bank account kind of money, I've learned to be an unimpressed anti-snob.


What does impress me is education, achievement, taste and character and those attributes can exist with people across class lines. A little humility isn't bad too.

If you haven't read Evelina, I encourage you to. You will see all kinds of snobs and reverse snobs in that book and enjoy it immensely.

Skankdom In Training

More proof of the end of Western Civilization as we know it
I wonder if any of the adults are in the least bit shocked at this child's t-shirt?

Modern Manners - French Style

Le Petit Journal : Jacques Chirac gaulé
by CANALPLUS

No understanding of french is necessary

The look on Madame Chirac's face...priceless

and in case you missed this from the Huffington Post

French Divorce Ruling Allows Text Messages As Evidence

AP - Unfaithful spouses in France beware: Passionate text messages sent to mistresses and lovers can now be used as evidence against you in a divorce.
Experts say the recent ruling by France's Supreme Court to accept phone exchanges as legitimate proof of adultery will make it easier for the French to get divorced. Previously, French husbands and wives often had to wait for years to escape a marriage if they could not prove that their spouse was misbehaving or mistreating them.

At least Chirac wasn't texting

Around Town - Social Primer Opening at Lily Lodge

When I saw this invitation on Social Primer, I just had to stop by and congratulate blogger and social etiquettician, K. Cooper Ray on his store opening at the Lily Lodge at 644 N Robertson Boulevard. I was hoping to run into Hautelook hottie, Carlota Espinosa, which I didn't, but the event was crowded with the kind of LA socialites that I rarely see in my westside hood. (Seriously, I never see Alfredo and Lulu at Toscana in Brentwood...they must cook Italian at home)

While I often link to corporate retailers like Neiman Marcus, I strongly believe in supporting small boutiques which bring us charming and often one of kind items that add that old fashioned elegance to our lives. Robertson is a great shopping street, especially now that Chanel and Ralph Lauren have opened stores. But seriously, Karl and Ralph don't need your business while the local merchants do.
So, if you are looking for a special gift for a gentleman...and Father's Day is coming up in a couple of months, do check out the Social Primer shop. You will be certain to find something special.

The very natty bow tied gentleman K. Cooper Ray

Here's the Vanity Fair write up

Social Studies

What: The opening of Cooper Ray’s Social Primer.

Where: Lily Lodge, West Hollywood.

Who: Cooper Ray, Perry Reeves, Crystal Lourd, Jamie Tisch, Lulu de Kwiatkowski, Lucy Liu, Sally Perrin, Cameron Silver, Lady Victoria Hervey, and Magda Berliner.

Why: Because Ray, the editor of SocialPrimer.com, which teaches gentlemen how to “instill civility into an uncivilized world,” took his brand one step further with the pop-up shop that features his favorite picks from the site.

Talking Point: The merits of old-school style, as guests admired the vintage stationery, soaps, and bow ties.

Congratulations Cooper!

Books - Oh The Calamity!

If you haven't already read Wendy B's post on Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror - The Calamitous 14th Century" you need to read it now.

It's become de rigueur for newspaper columnists, bloggers and people standing around the water cooler to bemoan the decline of civilization as evidenced by what one historian called "economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration, decay of manners."

If you're feeling panicky over the state of the world, A Distant Mirror is my prescription for what ails you.

Tuchman, writing in 1978, says, "If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before."

As they say...read the whole thing.

And, what I want to know is where is Wendy's instalaunch?

Dating Rules and Reasons For Cheating

OMG...I'm so confused.

Thank God I'm long beyond the dating scene because there are new rules for dating...and they're not nice.

OK...this is supposed to be tongue in cheek...but it's kinda not.

From the Misadventures in Dating Blog

we've got He Man Women Hater's Dating Rules

1. Boys do what they can, men do what they want.
2. If you don’t know the guy or he is a douche, fuck his gf and/or wife to within an inch of her life. 3. Guilt is for pussies, however if you do something without her consent (includes getting her drunk douche bag) you should be castrated, fed your dick and shot in the head.
4. As with the markets celebrate your victories and move on to the next. Your score doesn’t go up if you keep hitting the same piece of ass.
5. Attachment is for pussies. “Date” as many as you can.
6. If you are dating 2+ at a time, lay it out there, if they can’t handle it, they can piss and the fuck off to an Analyst (had to put a jab in there).
7. Pick your targets before you get drunk. (Saves you from waking up Coyote Ugly).
8. Both Harper and BL1Y speak of the this relationship thing, I’m sorry but it does not compute.
9. Who cares what people think. Are you sheep? Be a fucking man. Fuck em!
10. Never lie, your friends appreciate the rejection/coyote ugly/drunk/disgusting/embarrassing stories more than you know. Just not as much as the women readers do…

In conjunction with The Hit List

The Jewish Chic
The Indian Chic
The Spaniard Chic
The Cuban Chic
The Argentinian Chic
The Brazilian Chic
The Middle Eastern Chic
The Greek Chic
The Swedish Chic
The Brit Chic
The European Chic (Russian)
The Bo Derek (10) Chic
The Artist/Musician/Model/Waitress
The Athletic Chic
The Good Chic (Best Liar)
The Bad Chic (Slut)
The Dog Lover Chic
The Doctor Chic
The Attorney Chic
The Over 30
The Single Mom Chic
The Bridge and Tunnel (B&T/SI) Chic
The Blue Collar Chic (Stripper)
The Ivy league/DABA/ High Maintenance Girl Chic
The Party Girl Chic
The Hott Dumb Chic (Since stripper was taken, any other will do)

(I like the fact that the older woman chic is over 30!!!)

All of this in response to a post from The Daily Flavor

Dating Rules for Females
1. Do what you want.
2. Get what you want - most* of the time “the end justifies the means” in dating. *home wrecking is never OK!
3. Never feel guilty about getting what you want.
4. Always rejoice in your victories.
5. Don’t get too attached to quickly, even if you have to date 3 + men at a time.
6. If you are dating 3+ at a time, don’t let the participants know.
7. Do judge a book by it’s cover, at first! Then add up all the other positives and negatives.
8. Do put in all the work necessary to make a relationship work, once you choose it.
9. Don’t act or feel insecure - it’s unflattering, and if you begin to feel this way spend 10 mins analyzing why, and then never think about it again, just move on.
10. Never settle, not even for one night or five minutes.

OK...so even though this is tongue in cheek there is something still so sad about it.

Oh...it's so good to be middle aged.

Then we have from Yahoo

9 Reasons People Cheat

1. Bored

2. Dependence

3. Confusion

4. Because They Let You

5. Nurturing

6. Revenge

7. Confirmation of Attractiveness

8. The Thrill

9. They Don't Consider It Cheating, Even Though You Might

This subject has been on my mind the last week or two because of a situation with one of my young colleagues. After 4 months of dating a man that she fell madly in love with, she found out...through Facebook of course, that he was married with two children. (It's amazing what you can learn through Facebook...another topic for another post)

So, I give you reason number 10

10. Because They Can...And They Will

Social Primer - Now More Than Ever

Let's face it, Chivalry is dead and sometimes I wonder if all gentlemanly manners have disappeared forever. Will my daughter ever even meet a man who knows any etiquette at all. I sincerely doubt it. In this generation of hook-ups and communication by text message, will she ever meet a man who knows how to write a formal note, use proper table manners or stand up when she approaches the table.

Well, finally I have a little hope after discovering this website.

Social Primer, Manners, Conversation, Style & Handling Your Liquor

Raison d'Etre

SocialPrimer as Utopia
Like Sir Thomas More’s idyllic island Utopia, SP envisions SocialPrimer as a place where the ideal of a well-mannered society can exist. Readers of these pages know that SP sets the bar high, so yes, Sir Thomas More would be a suitable comparison. Moving on. We inhabit an increasingly frenetic world where manners are often considered a liability; I created this little island on the internet to lament, rant and in the end dream of a more civilized world.

Good manners are not congenital. Just as Homo eructus did not saunter out of the cave knowing which fork to use and when to stand to greet a lady, not all of us were born with parents who inheritably knew the correct way to proceed through life. Good manners are taught and learned. SP pines for an ideal world where manners and civility are the common order of the day, not extraordinary occurrences that warrant attention. What could be more idyllic that that?

I appreciate Social Primer's call for civility....and you should to.

Check out his website.

Dating In A Downturn

From the Atlantic.com by way of Instapundit

Feb 26 2009, 1:05 pm by Reihan Salam
Dating in a Downturn

In yesterday's Washington Post, Tara Bahrampour filed a dispatch on dating in an economic downturn.

From investment bankers to real estate developers to construction workers, no job means no buying rounds of $15 martinis for a pretty woman and her girlfriends. No hosting parties in the bachelor loft. And often, no idea how to present one's new self on the dating market.

The real issue is: will an economic downturn break the back of the regime in which women are expected to take, and are socialized into, the role of the provided-for party? Given the fact that women's rates of educational attainment are surpassing that of men, and the fact that the downturn will likely accelerate the decline of a number of male-dominated professions -- construction, finance, etc. -- will we see a sharp rise in the economic power of women that will lead to a corresponding change in the sexual marketplace?

We shall see...

The Key To Kissing

From Popular Science
And they ought to know this stuff....

The Secret of Successful Kissing

Can drooling make you a better kisser? Scientific evidence suggests that wet, sloppy smooches pack a bigger biochemical punch than dry kisses and thus may be more likely to lead to sex and reproduction, says Rutgers University researcher Helen Fischer, who spoke today at the AAAS conference in Chicago.

Men are particularly prone to sloppy kissing, she notes, possibly because males tend to have a poor sense of smell and taste and aggressive face sucking may be an unconscious effort to gauge a partner's estrogen levels and fertility cycle. It may also be an unwitting effort to transmit testosterone, which can be found in saliva and can increase sexual attraction. Alternatively, it may also be just plain gross. (That would be my unscientific conclusion.)

Fisher and other scientists who study "philematology," the science of kissing, believe that the act evolved as a "mechanism for mate choice and selection." It stimulates sex drive, romantic love and attachment, the latter two helping us tolerate people even when we're not having sex with them, she says. Saliva is a powerful way to telegraph your chemical goods but be warned that extra drool could backfire if your prospective mate finds you biochemically incompatible. Hence, the term "kiss of death," says Fischer. Good luck.

Going For The Gold - Recession Style

Is this a response to
Dating a Banker Anonymous?

Elisabeth Eaves of Forbes.com is asking
Will The Recession End Gold Digging?

It looks like the economic downturn is producing a dating downturn too. At least this is true in financial centers like New York, where an unhealthily intimate bond between mating and money has persisted down the decades, from Edith Wharton through Candace Bushnell.

Sane people of average incomes and healthy libidos may now be asking, who would stop coupling just because of a li'l old downturn? Don't we all now have more time for romance on our hands? The answer is, your ilk do not dominate New York social life. The dating downturn is affecting men and women for whom money, self-image and mating are inextricable from one another.

Moreover, who wants to go through life scheming over how to get someone else to support you, when it's much less stressful to figure out how to support yourself? Marry for money, and you'll earn every penny of it, as some wise woman once said. Men whose identity is tied up in having lots and lots of cash--as it tends to be, when someone works slavish hours at boring tasks for no reason other than extra zeros at the end of his paycheck--are tedious company. Loss of income then causes them to have identity crises, which can make them even less pleasant. Just as pretty women sometimes fail to develop much character, because they can get attention and advantage without it, so, too, do wealthy men.

Modern would-be gold diggers would do well to note that since women entered the workforce in large numbers, Americans have been returning to what sociologists call "assortive mating," that is, marrying within their own careers and income levels; doctors have the highest in-mating rate of any profession. In other words, the best way to mate with someone in job X is to also get that job yourself. And by the time you've done that, selling your charms to the highest bidder becomes a lot less attractive. You can bet that if William Makepeace Thackeray were writing Vanity Fair today, Becky Sharp would have set her sights on investment banking, not an investment banker.

For victims of the dating downturn, I'd like to end by recommending men who have not made a big income their life's goal--artists, writers, journalists, academics, musicians, coaches, teachers, etc. They can't take you to restaurants run by brand-name chefs or set you up with a clothing allowance, but they're not having identity crises. A starving artist last year is a starving artist today, only more confident, having been reassured that he made the right choice when he ignored parental urgings to go into some "secure" profession. These men have developed charm, domestic skills, empathy, maybe even some moral fiber. You just might find them so pleasant that you can walk away from dinner without feeling like you should have been paid for your time.

Recession be damned!

If you are still out there hoping to hook up with a Finance Boy Friend or FBF

you might want to check out the sale at Myla.com.

10% off the Myla spring collection throughout February!

Superbowl versus Sex

For those women who believe that men just aren't emotional haven't spent enough time watching football.
In a matter of seconds a man can go through a deeper emotional experience than he can in an entire year spent with you.
The whole gamut from dejection and desperation to the ultimate elation.
And sorry to give you the bad news...their emotional response to football is by far deeper than their emotional response to having sex with you.
Live with it.

I for one was thrilled by the 100 yard run by the Steelers, a first ever in Superbowl history.
The gentlemen that I was watching the game with were on the point of complete emotional unbalance.
And they say that women are the weaker sex....

The Ultimate Fantasy Closet