MERRY Christmas to the One Percent!
Yes, it's me, Muffy de Rothschild, from whom you failed to receive festive greetings in 2010. I'm afraid I was rather preoccupied last holiday season with boosting my bank accounts after my investments took a beating. Like many of you, presumably, I decided to lie low, fleeing gloomy Vancouver to lounge by the infinity pool with my laptop and telephone at my private Caribbean island retreat on Mustique, hatching plump new golden eggs.
Voilà - success! I've done brilliantly this past year. Not for me some squalid tent in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, darlings - I attend the openings of the VAG's major shows in full war-paint, going on to dine at some stylish downtown boîte. I wholeheartedly recommend the foie gras à la king or its seasonal equivalent.
Darlings, I must share one word with you this festive season, and that is "Courage." It's time to rail against the assaults by the ignorant riffraff on everything we stand for, the wealthy white family values that have made North American life the envy of peasants around the world. Stand proud.
We are under such siege from the brown-toothed layabouts, people who wouldn't know a waterfall shower if you pushed them under it with a brick of nasty homemade soap. Who gave these hooligans the right to make their marijuana-rasped voices heard? A few months ago, I passed the unruly Occupy Vancouver horde en route to a luncheon at the Four Seasons. Would you believe that some pimply dreadlocked ragamuffin actually tossed a carton of fried garlic tofu at my sable coat? Street food, indeed. What is our world coming to?
Why aren't these louts infesting public transit en route to jobs doing the things that make our country tick: scouring the sewers, scraping gum off sidewalks, cleaning our air and so forth? Instead, they seem to have given up entirely on the idea of gainful employment. They prefer to gather in ratty clusters and chide the rest of us for denying them the chance to drink champagne and shop at Tiffany - privileges that we have ourselves earned by right of birth or hardcore travail.
Speaking of champagne, I mentioned in my 2009 letter that, in my travels, I'd stumbled on a new interest, a Mexican cognac called tequila. I got a bit too enthused at one point but Betty Ford sorted me out, and I'm back on the champagne diet. I urge you to follow suit. As "sparkling wine" upstarts proliferate, French champagne manufacturers need our support. God knows they've propped all of us up over the years! Why not pour yourself a glass right now, mid-letter? Cincin!
My dears, I know that many of you look to me for guidance when you're at a loss for gift ideas as Christmas descends. I must say I'm taken with the Neiman Marcus Fantasy Gifts collection this year for one reason only, and that is the His and Hers Fountains. You've seen masterful waterworks by these California designers before - they created The Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas and The Dubai Fountain.
Now you can have a pair of fountains that dance in unison on your own estate. What a delight! And if you have to rationalize the expense to some pesky college dropout, $10,000 of the $1 million tab will be donated to a waterrelated charity - which would receive diddly duck, if not for you.
As you know, my last husband Pinky and I are no longer together, due to certain illegal shenanigans of his in Mexico. In recent months, billionaire Horace Hinkle bottom has been parking his car in my garage, so to speak. I've told H.H. that I've put the His and Hers fountains on my own Christmas gift list. Fingers crossed!
H.H. has retaliated with a request for the $125,000 Fantasy Gifts' Assouline Custom-Built Library, which he wants to install in his garage. I pointed out that I've never seen him read anything more challenging than USA Today online. He countered that Assouline promises to furnish his shelves with 250 current and vintage volumes in the genre of his choice. The genre he has chosen is "hot rods." Not at all to my taste, darlings. At least he'll be keeping it in the garage along with his dusty old car collection.
It'll be a low-key Christmas celebration for Horace and me this year. His children, stepchildren and their hangerson are estranged, while the ones I adopted out of the goodness of my heart (and, of course, for accessorizing purposes) are spending the holiday with their birth parents for reasons unknown. But don't worry about us - we'll be on Mustique again. After dinner, as usual, we'll have our staff build us a bonfire on the beach and then they'll dance around it, singing some native mumbo-jumbo. Like the royals, we love that sort of thing.
We hope your own celebration will be equally pleasant and that 2012 is full of peaceful, unchallenged prosperity. Once again, dear friends, courage! Muffy
kate@katezimmerman.ca
