Posted by the bearer of ill tidings | 14.2.05 | |

 
In case one was wondering...

Recently the flow of posts here has slowed to a mere trickle. I am sorry to announce that it must be stanched entirely for about a month.

Merry Christmas, and be seeing you.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 23.12.04 | |

 
Remove the stone of shame. Attach the stone of triumph!
Cubans endure ritual suffering in honor of revered saint

HAVANA - (KRT) - Construction worker Enrique Pluma spent the day Thursday crawling through the grime and soot of Havana's crumbling streets with a huge rock attached to his ankle.

"When I was young, I couldn't walk. I asked St. Lazarus for help, and I got it. So now, every year, I give him thanks," said the 48-year-old man, sprawled bloody and weary on the ground during his torturous 11-mile journey to a religious sanctuary on the outskirts of Havana.

More...

Posted by Mr. Hiss | 17.12.04 | |

 
The morganatic the merrier
The Telegraph suggests a morganatic marriage for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. That's sensible. You'd be surprised how many problems morganatic marriage can solve. Or maybe you wouldn't, if you read this blog often.

Via Dappled Things.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 16.12.04 | |

 
Can you spot a bogus baronet?
Allow the Earl of Bradford to help you. He will tell you that you cannot "Become a Lord for £29.99," as this Reuters piece advertises.

LONDON (Reuters) - The British aristocracy has long been an exclusive club [Could have fooled me. --Ed.] but now anyone can become a Lord or Lady -- for as little as 30 pounds ($58).

A raft of British Web sites are offering one square foot of the Glencairn Estate in northeast Scotland and, with it, access to the prestigious-sounding title of Lord/Laird and Lady of Glencairn.

Buyagift.co.uk is offering the "fun" title as the "ideal gift for anyone who aspires to greatness" for 29.99 pounds, which includes a deed of ownership, a map of the Glencairn estate and a card which proves their title.

Lastminute.co.uk and thanksdarling.com are also offering shoppers the chance to lord it up as a Glencairn, which is believed to be nothing more than a small plot of croft land with the title invented for it.

This story comes courtesy of frequent commenter Frederica Holstein, who remarked, "All the best titles are fake anyway."
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 14.12.04 | |

 
A perfectly reasonable explanation
From the preface to "The Hunting of the Snark":

If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in Fit the Second)

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes."

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History--I will take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.

The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm," had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one." So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.

Sadly, I have been affiliated with several organizations that operate in this manner.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 14.12.04 | |

 
Posting will remain spotty. I am quite busy. Why, with the weather getting colder, I find I am increasingly obliged to keep an eye on Cratchit, who is eyeing my coal-box with growing persistence.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 8.12.04 | |

 
Fitz and Starts
Actually, it's Fitz and endings. Fitz was good while it lasted.

Another one for the Sic Transit file.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 6.12.04 | |

 
A Bullingdon Brannigan?
On the Bollinger Club, from Decline and Fall:

Mr Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs' room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College. From the rooms of Sir Alastair Digby-Vane-Trumpington, two staircases away, came a confused roaring and breaking of glass. They alone of the senior members of Scone were at home that evening, for it was the night of the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club. The others were all scattered over Boar's Hill and North Oxford at gay, contentious little parties, or at other senior common-rooms, or at the meetings of learned societies, for the annual Bollinger dinner is a difficult time for those in authority.

Today's Telegraph on what may have been a gathering of the Bullingdon Club, on which Waugh based the Bollinger:

When landlord Ian Rogers welcomed the well-spoken and immaculately dressed young men to his 15th century inn, he felt he could not have asked for more impressive clientele.

All wore expensive suits and ties. They showed impeccable manners as they were guided through the restaurant to the private dining area they had booked.

Apparently keen to be as little trouble as possible, the 14 mostly Oxford undergraduates, ordered the same starter and main course of salmon salads and fillet steaks. The house wines would be fine, they added in clipped accents.

Unfortunately somewhere between the salmon and the steak, all hell broke loose at the White Hart, in Fyfield, a village near Oxford.

The apparently perfect diners turned nasty, inexplicably smashing everything within their grasp and grappling with each other until wine and blood were running down the walls of the converted cellar.

Sounds exhilarating enough, but at least my circle confined its havoc to campus. And sometimes only to certain college-owned musical instruments.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 3.12.04 | |

 
Martini on the rocks
No, not that type of rock.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drinkers might want to keep a clear head when ordering a martini at New York's historic Algonquin Hotel or they might pay $10,000 for that cold sip.

The landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom.

How tacky. This will attract all the wrong people, and repel all the right ones.

I used to like the Algonquin. Sic transit, etc.

Update: Mr. Beck has found more gimmicky horrors at the Algonquin.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 2.12.04 | |

 
Your papers, please
Piles of Yale Free Press swiped

From the Yale Daily News:

[YFP Editor-in-Chief Diana] Feygin and her staff said they were horrified at the theft of this month's issues, which Feygin said was particularly ironic as the issue addressed academic freedom at Yale.

So much for dialogue. Although campus right-wingers can't be made to disappear (until they try for tenure), their paper is quite another story.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 30.11.04 | |

 
Club Dread
The New York Sun reports on the Yale Club's long march into tacky territory. It contains an indispensable description of a model club:

Throughout the club's floors, one can find black-and-white photos of the club's grand history and design. They recall an era when a club was a man's castle, as Cleveland Amory wrote in his book "Who Killed Society?":

"Here he had the best of his well-bred friends, the most comfortable of his well-stuffed chairs, the best of food, drink and cigars from his well-stocked larders and cellars, the least irritating of reading material from a well-censored library, and the best of games from well-mannered losers."

Also note this apt observation:

Traditionalists who oppose the design changes may hear again the word "bygone" in their school song "Bright College Years":

How bright will seem through mem'ry's haze
Those happy golden bygone days.

That about sums up the matter. Actually, it sums up most matters. [To hear "Bright College Years," why not visit the Old Oligarch?]

The piece from the Sun also quotes this "bilious Web log" (an accurate description) and our friend Mr. Panero, who has posted a (not at all disagreeable) encapsulation of the ideal club.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 26.11.04 | |

 
Over the ravine and through the woods
Thanksgiving at Schloss Hiss was wonderful. Until that ill-fated after-dinner motor-trip. Astonishingly, only uncle Fritz was injured; somehow he swallowed his insignia for the Order of the Red Eagle.

Happy Thanksgiving, and drive (or be driven) safely.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 25.11.04 | |

 
Today's Statshot at the Onion:

Leading Causes of Nightclub Brawls

16% Phonies

11% Poor lighting

23% Hip-hop clothing-line rivalry

19% Argument over legitimacy of Hanoverian succession

21% "Tear This Sh*t Up (Nightclub Brawl Remix)"

10% Bar out of Veuve Clicquot

Reasons 4 and 6 are quite serious.

I wonder whether the Onion has been following this blog? Thanks to Mr. B. for the tip.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 24.11.04 | |

 
If only Reed Irvine were around to see this.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 23.11.04 | |

 
Continuing in the spirit of Ottoammergau...
A commenter named "Number 6" writes, "I just have one question. Who is Number 1? And if you can't tell us that, maybe you can say what your name is an anagram of?"

I reply: First, those are two questions. Second, "Questions are a burden on others; answers, a prison for oneself."
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 23.11.04 | |

 
Flying the too-friendly skies
From the NY Times, on airport frisking:

Several women interviewed said that male colleagues had scoffed at their complaints, saying that a physical pat-down was a small price to pay for security.

"I laugh when men tell me that," said Betty Spence, president of the National Association for Female Executives, who says she has been selected for pat-downs several times in the last month on trips from New York to Chicago, Washington and Miami on various airlines. "Men don't know how offensive it is to be touched by anyone when you don't want to be touched."

Why wouldn't we know such a thing? (And haven't we been over this endlessly?) My years of living and working in New York have not inured me to the pokings and proddings one routinely receives here. I am not greatly reassured when the pokings and proddings are administered at length by an agent of the federal government.

This is not to say we should get rid of the security searches; the alternatives are scandalous x-rays, death at the hands of terrorists, or allowing all passengers to carry handguns. I find the last of these attractive (who would attempt to hijack a plane full of gun-toting Americans?) but unlikely to occur in my lifetime--and no great help in the interval between the shouting of "Allahu Akbar" and the detonation of plastique undergarments. So the choices are pat-downs, naked x-rays, and (potentially) death. I choose pat-downs.

I should also note that I am not a completely disinterested party. Screeners always pull me out of line for special searches. Every single time I fly. It could be my hats that attract their attention (not a pickelhaube when I'm traveling; just a modest homburg); or maybe it is that look on my face that says, "If you touch me I shall have to bathe in lye again tonight." It is a bonus to the screeners that I am clearly, except in matters of taste and style, not a member of any discernible minority; therefore no one could accuse security of racial profiling. Except me, of course.

But so be it. I try not to allow my face to take on a murderous aspect while someone fumbles about in my pockets and other passengers gawk at the spectacle of a man stripped to his waistcoat. It's a barbaric exercise, but that's what barbarism drives us to. But perhaps Ms. Spence prefers existing as smithereens.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 23.11.04 | |

 
Noble rot
From the Independent:

Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a Euroroyal bad boy who happens to be the Queen's cousin, is to appear in court this week in a grievous bodily harm case that could land him in jail for the next decade.

A German and British citizen who is 35th in line to the British throne, "Prince Punchy", as he is dubbed in Germany, is appealing against a January 2002 conviction for two assaults. ...

Ernst August, who broke protocol by kissing the Queen at a state banquet in Berlin this month, was fined €10,000 last year for another contretemps, this time in Austria. Other troubles include a bust-up with the mass-circulation tabloid Bild, which published pictures of him urinating against the Turkish Pavilion at the 2000 World-Expo in Hanover - hence Ernst August's other tabloid title, "The Peeing Prince".

The court saga is just the latest lurid episode to embroil Germany's increasingly redundant aristocracy. Ernst August's brother, Prince Heinrich of Hanover, has had an equally poisonous relationship with the media since his affair several years ago with a former religious education teacher turned cabaret artist. And Prince Ferfried von Hohenzollern, 62, has just dumped his wife to shack up with 33-year-old Tatjana Gsell, a surgically enhanced B-list celebrity. Unsurprisingly, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the Kaiser's great-grandson, stresses that Ferfried is "from a different strand of the family".

One would hope so. It seems like many of the problems of the German aristocracy could be solved by judicious use of the term "morganatic," and all the practices associated therewith.

Prince Punchy's maternal Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg genes must be recessive. And far from being "35th in line for the British throne," the Act of Settlement says the Prince's marriage to the Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco renders him ineligible. (Of course, good Jacobites don't give a fig, or any other small fruit, for the Act of Settlement--or the Hanovers, for that matter. And good Jacobites have a point.)
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 22.11.04 | |

 
"Well, I say let Harvard have its football and academics. Yale will always
be first in gentlemanly club life."
--C.M. Burns

Or will it?
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 21.11.04 | |

 
Hound unemployment set to skyrocket


Hunting ban forced through as new law

Legal challenge against hunt ban begins

Telegraph: Labour gets its ban - but forfeits all respect (courtesy of the great and powerful Z)


Why not send a small Christmas present to the Countryside Alliance? Or perhaps participate in its Online Auction. (One may bid on, among other things, a "luxury alpine apartment near Gstaad.") Or just buy something smaller from the Alliance's On-Line Shop.

What a terrible precedent. I have been following this fiasco for some time, and am ready to conclude that the Mother of Parliaments is an unfit parent.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 20.11.04 | |

 
One Year of Otto-da-Fe
I might not have realized it, had not old Willi remembered my anniversary. Below is his telegram of congratulations, slightly censored.



[I have been promising for some time to allow the Kaiser to come out of exile for another round of prognostications. Soon enough.]

Update: Irish Elk offers a generous tribute, for which I am most grateful.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 19.11.04 | |

 
Prince Snarls
Bully for the Prince of Wales. On the heels of his admirable campaign for mutton [please stop snickering], HRH gets another gold star in my book, reversing a decades-long streak of black marks.

The Scotsman's headline reads: "Prince's blast at people who get above their station."
An excerpt from HRH's memo on a troublesome employee who, in effect, requested a promotion:

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."

The memo concludes, "What on earth am I to tell [the employee in question]? She is so PC it frightens me rigid."

I do not mean to question the employee's accusation of harassment against someone else in Prince Charles's employ. But I can hardly take seriously an employee who complains that her workplace is, according to the Scotsman, "'hierarchical and elitist', an institution run in an 'Edwardian fashion' where everyone knew their place and those who did not were punished." How can a workplace where no one knows his place and no transgressions are punished, well, work?

I look forward to more of HRH's observations of what is wrong with society. However, I may be setting myself up for disappointment if I judge those observations against the high standard set by the fourteenth Earl of Gurney: "Young ladies are showing their ankles and bosoms in public and saying rude things about the Queen!" Indeed, and worse.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 18.11.04 | |

 
"My kingdom for a web domain!" Or is it "My web domain for a kingdom"?
A message from Prince Regent Nguyen Phuc Buu Chanh of Viet-Nam .

I was surprised to receive this; somehow I have found myself on the mailing list of the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 17.11.04 | |

 
Mighty Manhattan, with spires...
City Journal:Reimagining the Far West Side

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site has gotten everyone talking about architecture, but so far it's a one-sided conversation, as if the only question worth discussing is: What kind of modernism do we want? The graceless modernism of Daniel Libeskind's brutal and exhibitionistic "master plan"? The suave modernism of David Childs's valiant (but hopeless) effort to transform that plan's tallest building into a silk purse? But since we've now had 50 years of modernism here in New York, and only a half-dozen good buildings among hundreds of awful ones to show for it, maybe what we really want now is . . . not modernism.

Think of modernism and you think Houston, maybe, or office parks from Cherry Hill to Cupertino. But not New York. Gotham is the city of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, New York trademarks, emblazoning the T-shirts that tourists take home from the Times Square souvenir shops. New York is the Plaza Hotel, the Flatiron Building, the old Bankers Trust and Equitable towers, the RCA Victor Building soaring over Saint Bartholomew's Church, the Sherry-Netherland, the San Remo. If Chicago takes the palm for inventing the skyscraper, New York can claim to have brought it to full flower. The classical skyscraper is one of Gotham's gifts to the world, the urbane expression of its technical genius, wealth, and confident cosmopolitanism.

More...

How refreshing to see a vision for New York that isn't post-apocalyptic.

Via Mr. Cusack.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 16.11.04 | |

 
1,540 Pounds of Cocaine Found Hidden in Squid

LIMA - Peruvian anti-drug agents seized almost 1,540 pounds of cocaine destined for the Mexico that was hidden inside of a shipment of squid, police said Monday. ...

National police officials said the drugs were wrapped in plastic, coated with pepper and packed in 25 tons of squid fillets to mask the smell.

What a disappointment. I was hoping that all that cocaine had been found in one giant squid.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 16.11.04 | |

 
A mutton's work is never done
Andrew Stuttaford expresses some nostalgia for mutton, noting Prince Charles's campaign for the much-neglected meat. HRH remarked,

"I remembered that when I was growing up that mutton was one of my favourite dishes, but that it had all but disappeared over the last 30 or 40 years," he said.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if we could help to boost the incomes of our hill farmers by encouraging a mutton renaissance?"

Yes. Yes, it would.

It may not help the hill farmers of England, but I know of one New York restaurant that serves a "legendary" (according to the menu) mutton chop: Keen's. Perhaps the legend has not yet reached my readers. A pity. Keen's mutton chop is quite tasty, and it is to Keen's great credit that the accompanying mint jelly, unlike that of all but a few restaurants, does not emit an ominous, radioactive green glow. (Dining before a late flight, I once had to refuse some mint jelly at the Oak Room because I feared it would set off Geiger counters at the airport.)

Afraid of mutton? Never mind. There are many other reasons to visit Keen's, one of my favorite haunts. The rest of the menu will not disappoint. And Keen's collection of memorabilia is not limited to the thousands of clay pipes (some smoked by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt) lining the ceilings and display cases. It also keeps on display the program of "Our American Cousin" that President Lincoln was holding when he was shot--a relic or a trophy, depending on one's view of Lincoln. But that's neither here nor there. One final point: visitors with overly delicate sensibilities might find the nude portrait of "Mrs. Keen" hanging over the bar startling. No reason to avoid the bar, of course.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 15.11.04 | |

 
Is the pope waxwork?
From the NY Times:

Up for sale was "The Ninth Hour," the [Maurizio Cattelan's] well-known room-size work depicting a realistic life-size wax figure of Pope John Paul II in white robes, felled by a meteorite that has crashed through a skylight. The piece had been sold in 2001 at Christie's, where Pierre Huber, the Geneva dealer, bought it for $886,000. Last night Phillips estimated it would bring $1.5 million to $2 million. Three people tried to buy the work, which sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $3 million.

If I wasted $3 million on that thing, I would want to remain anonymous, too.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 12.11.04 | |

 
Tuscan village to open truffle museum
AP reports that Enzo Francini, head of finances for the medieval town of 950 people, says, "It's going to be more than a museum, it's going to be an assault on the senses." I agree, but is that a selling point?
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 12.11.04 | |

 
This breaking news just in: Yasser Arafat is still dead
(Yes, I've been saving this line for a while.)
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 11.11.04 | |

 
Schiavo and Arafat Trade Places
Satire by Me[di]a Culpa, inspired by Dawn Eden:

Terri's parents were doubtful when the swap was first proposed by Palestinian officials on Tuesday.

"This would mean that my daughter's life would be in the hands of terrorists and an atheistic French government," said Bob Schindler. "On the other hand, these are terrorists and atheists who have demonstrated more commitment to life in one week than Michael Schiavo has in 14 years. I mean, they actually went so far as to rule out euthanasia! It came down to who do I trust my daughter with more -- terrorists and atheists or Michael Schiavo and the Florida Supreme Court? When you think of it like that, it's not a hard decision."

More...
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 11.11.04 | |

 
Padre Pistolas
Parishioners Lock Church to Back Gun-Toting Priest

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Angry parishioners chained shut a church in central Mexico on Friday in protest at the firing of their priest, whose habit of tucking a gun under his robes has earned him fame and the nickname "Padre Pistolas."

Hundreds of people from the town of Chucandiro demonstrated outside the cathedral in the city of Morelia after Catholic church leaders there defrocked their gunslinging priest, Alfredo Gallegos, local media reported.

"We have closed the church with chains and that's how it will stay until Father Alfredo comes back," protester Gilberto Moron was quoting as saying, adding that locals would accept no other priest.

Gallegos is wildly popular with parishioners but has angered his Catholic superiors with his habit of wearing a shiny pistol beneath his robes, despite strict laws in Mexico banning private citizens from carrying guns.

Also known for his love of cowboy boots and country music, Gallegos says he only carries a gun for protection, noting several of his friends have been killed over the years.

Locals say he has brought them huge social benefits, helping the marginalized and raising money for roads and hospital projects. "He has united us as a people," said Moron.

Church leaders gave no reason for sacking the priest.

Shades of St. Gabriel Possenti.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 9.11.04 | |

 
A twist in the Lord Lucan cocktail
A Channel 4 documentary will air new information about the case of Lord Lucan:

In the Channel 4 documentary, George Bingham, Lord Lucan's son, reveals that he does not believe that his father killed Mrs Rivett or attacked Lady Lucan, who survived. He blames a burglar - possibly someone paid by Lord Lucan as part of an "insurance fraud" - for the attacks.

Mr Bingham, 36, accuses Scotland Yard of jumping to the wrong conclusion and thinks that his mother, Lady Lucan, who was concussed and under medication, was mistaken about her attacker's identity. "I certainly don't believe he [Lord Lucan] struck the blows," Mr Bingham says in the programme. He believes that his father was waiting outside the family home and went in to investigate when he suspected the burglary had gone wrong.

Lady Lucan, until now considered the intended target of the bludgeoning, was not pleased:

Lady Lucan, who refused to be interviewed for the documentary, criticised her only son this weekend. "I think my son is an absolute disgrace. I don't know why he is doing this," she said. "If my son had not done this, the anniversary might have passed with barely a whimper."

Her Ladyship's other comments are puzzling:

Lady Lucan, who is now estranged from her three adult children, is convinced that her husband is dead. She believes that, the day after the murder, he took his own life during a Channel crossing by stepping off a ferry "like the nobleman he was".

A compliment to the man who supposedly meant to kill her? Incidentally, Taki knew "Lucky," and also thinks the old boy drowned himself.

That doesn't necessarily mean I'll skip my trip to Africa. I've already packed my bitters, canoe, and cleft sticks.

Thanks to the the good folks at CaNN News for the tip.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 9.11.04 | |

 
TV-B-Gone
Tiny TV-B-Gone turns off most any boob tube
As Raymond Shaw put it, "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off." This little gadget allows one secretly to turn televisions off wherever one goes--bars, for instance, or the Yale Club's Grill Room (now equipped with several flat-screened monstrosities). This will make a fine stocking-stuffer.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 8.11.04 | |

 
Club Flub
Mr. Panero's complaints about the Yale Club are spot on:

Well, like Gatsby, the recent history of this Club has been tragic. Wedding parties, business meetings, and conferences now invade every nook of the clubhouse. Good luck finding a quiet afternoon the library. The Grill Room has recently been stripped of its smoky, hunting-lodge feel. And now, in the past two weeks, an even graver injury has befallen the clubhouse. In order to make the second-floor lounge more convertible to conferences and weddings, the old lounge furniture, long newspaper table, and rugs have been replaced with seconds from a Holiday Inn--with lighting by way of Versace. And what of the castoffs? Sold at auction for pennies.

Pennies, indeed. I managed to pick up a few pieces at the silent auction. I have added them to my collection of relics of better times at the Club, which includes a chandelier and a few other pieces I acquired when the Club gutted its grill room last year.

When I caught a glimpse of the new furniture in the lounge, I needed to brace myself against a column and a double bourbon. The room previously had a simple, visually unobtrusive, masculine feel. Its arrangement is now mindless, its color scheme garish, and its design feminine. One could only conclude that the Club's house committee must be populated by blind men, the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and a few batty old women with too many mail-order catalogues within close reach. The most inexcusable additions are a few large brass torchères with speckled glass bowls, which could only have come from the Target 1920s collection. The coffee tables resemble distressed Pottery Barn items. And then there are the orange "leather" sofas: I am told they are temporary, but I will believe that when all that remains of them is the lingering odor of new naugehyde.

I was recently at the Century Club, and the contrast nearly caused me to weep.

On a whim--one I may or may not regret later--I have sent the above comments about the mangled lounge, along with a few other complaints, to the Yale Club's house committee and president. I would tell them to stuff it in their pipes and smoke it, but smoking isn't allowed in the Club anymore.

Somewhat in the spirit of Rufus T. Firefly, I have long entertained the idea of starting my own club and perhaps beating a few over the head with it when it becomes appropriately established. Hesitant as I am to mimic the upstart J.P. Morgan, one has to admit that his pariahdom resulted in something worthwhile in Stanford White's Metropolitan Club. (There is a modest commercial townhouse for sale on East 43rd Street--right next to Club Row, and home to a few lovely clubs of its own. It might just be suitable--any takers?)
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 8.11.04 | |

 
Selective reality at Yale
A letter in the Yale Daily News:

To the Editor:

Must you always refer to President Bush as "Bush '68"?

I mean, it's bad enough that he's going to be president for another four years without you rubbing salt into the wound by reminding us that he was admitted to Yale without any special accomplishments -- not academic, athletic, musical, dramatic or anything else, other than family name and money.

Joel Rosenbaum

Nov. 3, 2004

The writer is a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

What a petty request, and one that neatly encapsulates the Democratic Party's recent history: when reality is unpleasant, deny it. Hardly a way to run a newspaper or a country.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 5.11.04 | |

 
All over America people were waking up, queasy and hopeful.

Breakfast this morning at Schloss Hiss

I assume I am not the only one who found himself the worse for wear after a long night of election-watching.

I see that the good folks at Armavirmque have posted photographs of last night’s Fitz gathering (as always, highly recommended). Though I was there, I am not to be found in the snapshots—-not, as some readers may have surmised, because I do not show up on film, but because I had left early to attend an election-night party hosted by fourth cousin and frequent commenter Frederica Holstein. The latter affair attracted, among other curiosities, a near-staggering number of pro-Bush Europeans: six. Well, they were Central and Southern Europeans. Miss Holstein, a citizen of Austria ("the Empire," as she insists), regretted that she was ineligible to vote for the man she calls our Texan Jan Sobieski. And so he may be.

In retrospect, Miss Holstein's cascading fountains of Veuve-Clicquot almost--but not quite--compensate for my disappointment at not meeting Mr. Sullivan and a few others at Fitz.

By the way, we did argue about the appropriateness of serving La Grande Dame at this pro-Bush function, given her country of origin. Luckily, the purists did not win out. Churchill's dictum on champagne had the effect of Scripture: "In success you deserve it, and in defeat you need it." Thank goodness it turned out to be the former.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 3.11.04 | |

 
By the light of the African moon
The Telegraph's obituary for Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (she was by request never styled "Dowager Duchess of Gloucester" after her husband's death in 1974) mentions her exploits in Africa:

She also made the brief acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh, who irritated his hosts by sporting a conspicuous hat at night. "I'm told the Kenyan moon is dangerous and makes people decidedly odd," he explained.

Evidently. No, on second thought, Waugh probably did not require the Kenyan moon.

The obit notes that "Princess Alice remembered a time when the British aristocracy lived far more sumptuously than kings or presidents do today":

A train would be hired to transport the household and its eight tons of luggage; and at Bowhill, a mere mansion compared with the palaces of Drumlanrig and Boughton, Christmas Dinner in the 1920s still meant feeding 150lbs of turkey to 220 mouths. When news of the second nurse's engagement to the groom of the chambers reached the nursery on one of these occasions, the housekeeper's only comment to nanny was: "Wherever can they have met?"

Read on. I was surprised to learn that defenestration was a holiday frolic at houses other than my own.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 1.11.04 | |

 
I have begun to bring my list of links up to date; it is full of anomalies
and anachronisms, as Lord Marchmain would say.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 29.10.04 | |

 
Artists Stage a Be-In at Bergdorf's
The Times reports:

"Retail stores have got to be a cultural experience, too, now," [Robert Burke, fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman] said. And Bergdorf Goodman is doing its best to join the charge toward hipness, however much that may clash with its current image as a sort of safe house for shoppers who rarely venture south of 14th Street.

The retailer's latest effort, the Collage Project, opened Monday in the Fifth Avenue windows and on the third floor of the men's store. For 10 hours, 20 young artists set themselves up on trestle tables and, using glue sticks, X-Acto knives, scissors, fabric, sewing machines, heaps of fliers, old children's books, vintage National Geographics, origami paper and clippings from 1970's smut magazines, proceeded to make art.

"Art," you say? This is hardly what I would call a "cultural experience" in the best sense. Next time I have the urge to go to Bergdorf, perhaps I shall stage my own "be-in" at the Oak Bar.
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 29.10.04 | |

 

"States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel."
--Adam Cohen in the New York Times, 25 October 2004, on what we can expect should President Bush be re-elected. Emphasis mine.

A question for the hyperventilating Mr. Cohen, or the many Chicken Littles who quote him: What, exactly, is a "mini-theocracy"? A theocracy with diminutive gods?
Posted by Mr. Hiss | 29.10.04 | |