Not A Pink Girl

This is 2008, not 1958, right?

I was flipping through the Vera Bradley catalog I got in the mail. I’m not really a Vera Bradley girl (partially because I’m not a pink girl [natch] & her things have so much pink in them), but last year I must have gotten on a mailing list (I suspect Hallmark) & I started receiving these catalogs.

I’ve bought my mom a few Vera Bradley items. One is a beautiful quilted jacket that I got brand-new, never-worn on eBay for some ridiculously low price like $20. One is done in a pattern called “Pinwheel Pink” & it’s a travel organizer for all one’s toiletries. I got it on amazon for $47 (which is pretty much the retail price).

I’ve never seen my mom wear the jacket, so I’m not sure how thrilled she is with it. But she said she loves the travel case. She often goes back & forth between her house & my sister’s house (about a 40-mile drive), so I think this accessory comes in handy for her.

The print is a special Vera Bradley pattern in that VB claims they donate 10% of the net proceeds from the sale of a Pinwheel Pink piece to The Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer & other breast cancer projects & services. My mom is a two-time breast cancer survivor (& a three-time cancer survivor), so it’s nice to know I’m giving to a good cause when I buy something. (Although I suspect not much money ever gets to cancer research; call me cynical, but my experience with corporate America has led be to think they pretty much keep every dime they can in their own pockets.)

So I get the Vera Bradley catalogs every couple of months. The latest catalog is entitled “Take Time” & I think it’s the spring 2008 catalog. It’s not large (it has about 26 pages). The stunning thing about this advertisement is that it could have been printed in 1958. Why? Because every model in the booklet is white. (Or canine.)

Thumbing through the pages, I was annoyed to notice that it looked like it was photographed in the Hamptons of Long Island, New York. (I differentiate because I live in Virginia, & we have a Hampton Roads area here that’s near Norfolk & Virginia Beach [that’s where our state Democratic Convention is being held this weekend] & I don’t think this catalog was photographed there.)

You know, the snobby Hamptons, where Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City fame takes the jitney with her grrfrens for wild summer weekends of drinking, romance, drinking, general cattiness, drinking, & icky stuff like nausea, shocking breakups & scabies (usually acquiring while – you guessed it – drinking).

I know one of the reasons I have a bad opinion of the Hamptons is because I’m jealous. You have this gorgeous piece of land that abuts the beach with great Malibu-esque beach houses on it, & you make it so horrifically expensive to go there that you keep all the “undesirables” (like me) out. You know, just like they did with Malibu.

It makes me laugh (but not in a funny way) when I see people like Martha Stewart hobnobbing with Diddy just because each of them has enough money to buy land in the Hamptons & throw huge, expensive-champagne-soaked parties there during high season. Can you imagine them actually hanging out together if their common fortunes hadn’t thrown them into the same high-rent districts? Yep, when Sean John rolls up to his East Hampton crib, he’s far from the PJs in Harlem where he was born. & I doubt that when Martha & the Diddster are clinking Cristal that she realizes his father was gunned down when Diddy was 3 years old because he was an associate of druglord Frank Lucas, recently played by Denzel Washington in the movie American Gangster (a movie you should be sure & miss because it’s not good; any Denzel is good, but this movie wasted his talent).

(Speaking of Frank Lucas, don’t forget what Fat Joe said:

Haters get tight when you’re worth a million,

That’s why I wear this chinchilla, to hurt their feelings.

Joey Crack, if you’re reading this, I love you. Holla @ your girl.)

And you know that Diddy has no idea that Martha’s daddy was a Polish American who was a drug dealer in his own right, although he peddled his wares legally. Could it be that this, & not their obscene wealth, is the thread that draws Martha & Diddy together, that their respective fathers were in the same business?

But how ironic is it that Martha’s done time & Diddy has not? So does that mean that Martha has street cred but the Diddster’s just a wangsta?

Believe me, they’re not taking the smelly old jitney to the Hamptons. Their helicopter pilots are just scanning the world below for that big “H” so they can land the whirlybird & disgorge their passengers, most of whom have more money than everyone in my little suburb combined.

And now they can commiserate with poor Tiger Woods who just bought a property nearby for for a cool $65 million. At least I don’t have to see him pump his fist & bare his teeth like a 7-year-old anymore (or at least for awhile). Did you hear that huge collective sigh of relief coming from Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, Rocco Mediate, Fred Couples (my favorite, pictured above at the President’s Cup), etc., when Tiger announced his forced retirement? My little breathy emission of elation was included in that roar, believe me. Now I can enjoy watching professional golf – live & on television – again!

More on this thread in my next post. Happy first day of summer!