Count Ugolino, The Yankee
by admin
“I’ll just be a minute,” begged my friend, Kirsten.
“Fine,” I said… rather miffed that I had been brought to the mall in the first place. Kirsten had called me not two hours before and asked if I’d like to accompany her to the bookstore. And, of course, I said yes, thinking she meant a proper book store and not the miniature mall version – much less the churchy mall bookstore, with their lizard skin bound New Testaments and cross shaped candies at the counter.
“You can’t even buy ‘Grapes Of Wrath’ in this place,” I complained. “Much less ‘Naked Lunch’, because HEAVEN-FORBID someone uses a mechanical device to PLEASURE THEMSELVES,” I was intoning over the absurd Christian shopping music.
“Psshhtt!! Stop it already,” Kirsten begged. “Oh look, ‘A Purpose Driven Christmas!’”
To be honest, it wasn’t the bookstore that tormented me for the rest of the weekend. Nay, it was something much worse, much more sinister, much more in-your-face than the sparking Nunzilla (which caused quite a conversation on the way home – are these people fond of the Nunzilla or are they making fun of Catholicism… or are they just making a dollar on anything they can?), something much more … capitalistically blatant.
We walked for about a half-mile, changed floors three times, and past several perfectly homogenized gift stores with initials in their names before coming to the outer ring of Hell’s ninth circle: a store so vile in its outer décor that I imagined Liberace wincing at its gilded mall doors.
All around the entrance were wreaths made of jagged green plastic leaves and tiny red Styrofoam berries. There were mechanical statuettes of Joseph and Mary waving at two wise men and a cow, while the third wise man, having read the heavens of an entirely different star, was clearly headed in the direction of The Gap. Not an angel in the scene.
We were making innocent small talk about this holy crèche mismanagement, when… as if ordained by King Herod himself, I was stricken by the tonnage of the air from Yankee Candle – our destination.
I politely waited in the car.
Dear Yankee Candle, I hate you. Please go the way of Lehman. Follow your yonder star…
Comments
When I was growing up in Palm Springs, on our way to school, my two pals and I would love to ring Liberace’s side door bell, just to piss him off and watch him answer the door in his lamé bathrobes. We were about 8 years old, we’d take turns ringing the bell and running away lickety split before reach the door. We’d hide behind the brick wall across the street to watch his reaction. My heart would be pounding like a kettle drum.
Weeeeeeeeeeeee!I’d be all excited! Almost as much fun as whirling dirvish!
Weee! I am imagining you doing this to Mr. Liberace, and I am laughing… partially because I am imagining him walking around with a gigantic golden candelabra to match his lamé. Wonderful story, Christian. Thank you for sharing it!