Oddly Enough Blog

The Runway’s Got Talent!

It’s the same old story, Lamar. We’ve got a major fashion show today, but we can’t afford to pay professional models. You always manage to come through with models on the cheap. Any luck?

Don’t worry, Boss, I got us a good group today, and they’re free.

FREE? Huzzah! But how did you work that?

Oh. Well, they’re under the impression we’re having a reality TV talent show, so they each get to do a little “act” on the runway.

What? What the hell kind of “acts” do they do while modeling our designs, Lamar?

Uh, Tiffany will break out in a little tap dance. It’s very impressive to see in her stiletto heels, Boss.

Meet the Duchess of Holiday Weekends

Blog Guy, it’s me, the guy you got hooked on photos of that duchess…

I guess that narrows it down to about nine million guys.

I need fresh pictures, but the last time I asked, you gave me a duchess made of butter and a chick with gross fingernails. So this time, I’ll be clearer.

No names, please.

Okay, um, she’s a duchess, she got married recently and she’s a member of a royal family… Is that enough for you to go on?

Sure, say no more. I’ve got just what you want. Presenting, Spain’s Duchess of Alba Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, dancing at her wedding a few days ago.

Oh, the humanity!

Blog Guy, can you settle a bet I have with my investment manager’s astrologer?

Wait. Doesn’t it bother you that your investment manager HAS an astrologer?

Nah, it beats the hell out of his damned Magic 8-Ball. “Should I get out of the stock market?” “Ask again later…” Sheesh.

Anyway, he says the Pope gets a summer vacation, but I think the Pope works all the time.

You’re both right. The Pope does spend time at a fairly nice summer residence, at Castelgandolfo, Italy.

Just “fairly nice?” What’s wrong with it?

Sorry, we’re all tapped out…

I love it when real news stories are goofier than anything I could make up. It makes my job so much easier.

There is a United Nations ban on the sale of luxury goods to North Korea, see, and we’ve learned that Italy has foiled an attempt to violate that ban.

And what luxury goods were the North Koreans tying to buy? Lamborghini cars? Remy Martin cognac? Bulgari watches?

No, they were trying to get their mitts on “high-quality tap dancing shoes.” I am not making this up.

Our story on this said it was “not clear how the tap shoes might fit into North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s lavish lifestyle, which includes grandiose stage performances by North Korean performers.”

That’s not the only thing that isn’t clear. Here’s a country that has a nuclear weapons program, but it doesn’t have the technology to make its own tap dance shoes? Excuse me? You’ve got leather, you’ve got metal, you’ve got ball-peen hammers, right? What’s stopping you?

There were no floats? I didn’t notice!

Okay, it seems a large fire swept through Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival center this week, “destroying thousands of costumes and floats and throwing preparations for Brazil’s annual festival of hedonism into chaos.”

I know this is a serious thing. They work pretty hard all year long on that stuff, and Carnival starts in three weeks.

But COSTUMES? Really?

We have hundreds of photos a year from Brazil’s Carnival, and I can’t use most of them here because I don’t have enough of those expensive protective rectangles to cover the stuff that needs covering to protect my readers. Now suddenly we’re acting like the wardrobe from “Cats” went up in flames?

I’m trying to imagine the emotional conversations with the samba dancers this week.