Look at this honey. Flowering dogwood indeed, with some exquisite details: a figure on red bridge over the chasm of negative space, a pine tree, a cottage. The back is so lovely you should wear your hair up. This is the dress that would always be decent (you know when you’ve got to schlep to a bris or something) but it’s still fun. It’s got its original belt and whoever made was careful to feature different elements of the print in different quadrants of the dress. I like the tan background, and the mixture of flower and line borders that divide the dress into a series of tableaux. And thank you to Hatfeathers for including so many photos so show this frock in all its glory.
It’s still Mad As Hell Week. But I cannot be furious when I look at this dress. It’s a largish medium, (42.5” shoulder center to hem, 16” shoulder center to waist, Bust 41” Waist 32” Hip 70”+ 96” Hem sweep) with a current bid of $24.99. Bidding ends in 4 days, so go throw your hat in the ring.

I saw Triumph of the Will last night. Not the Riefenstahl/Hitler collaboration, but some thing on television that pre-empted all other programming and involved the ramblings of this dude that some people call the President of the United States. I saw it in a bar with the sound off. I couldn’t always read the closed captioning with people getting in front of me and whatnot, but whenever this dude said something the camera would cut away to show the audience applauding. He got 5 or 6 standing ovations that looked rehearsed. It reminded me of the Madonna version of “Evita”. You know, where she has her big “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” moment, but the director doesn’t think she can hold a close-up, so he cuts away to show the crowd. There was a lot of rhetoric about private health insurance being the best option for people. And some offer of tax cuts for people below the poverty level to deduct health insurance costs. Let them eat cake, I guess. Then he said he had a plan to get the deficit under control within 5 years. The camera then cut to Hillary Rodham Clinton, seated and applauding but with a wry smirk on her face. You know, just like at the Academy Awards, where the show the reaction shots of the other nominees. Then there was talk of security, and people who hate freedom (that word has become totally 1984-style meaningless), and there were reaction shots of military types with lots of medals on their dress uniforms. Was there an applause sign?

The whole time I was trying to figure out the background. Bush, Cheney and Pelosi were standing in front of something covered in red and white stripes. I thought, what is that? A circus tent? It took me a good 10 minutes to figure out that it was part of an enormous flag.

I left. No one in the bar was watching. I hear on the radio this morning that Bush intends to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq despite opposition.