Wry Martinis Read online

  CAMILLA: You were brilliant. He didn’t suspect a thing.

  CHARLES: Splendid chap. Mum thinks he’s a pip.

  CAMILLA: A pimp?

  CHARLES: Pip. We really ought to get one of those, what do you call them, cellulite phones. Where were we?

  CAMILLA: You were about to spread Marmite all over me and (clicking sound)—Andrew! I’m still on! Hello? Hello? Well, I don’t know what that was.

  CHARLES: Bloody country phones.

  —The Washington Post, 1993

  Best Sellers

  Rankings reflect totally unscientific methods of estimating sales figures, for the week ending Feb. 17, at something like 3,050 bookstores plus wholesalers serving 28,000 other retailers (gift shops, massage parlors, supermarkets), statistically weighted (whatever that means) to represent sales from Point Darrow, Alaska, to Key Lumbago, Florida. An asterisk indicates that we’re trying to annoy the author of the book listed above the asterisk.

  —The New Yorker, 1995

  Stardate

  12:00 12:00 12:00

  “I watch science-fiction movies.… I like to watch them on

  tape, so I can examine them closely. There’s only one

  problem: I still can’t figure out my VCR.”

  —William Shatner, in TV Guide

  CAPTAIN KIRK: Captain’s log, stardate 7412.6 … hello? The red light still isn’t going on. Testing, 1-2-3-4. Chekov, it’s not recording.

  CHEKOV: I know, Keptin. Perhaps a negative function with the clock-timer.

  UHURA: Captain, I’m getting indications of a Klingon presence.

  KIRK: Mr. Spock?

  SPOCK: I confirm at least six Imperial Klingon warships, Captain, and heading toward our position at Warp 7.

  KIRK: No, the Captain’s log. Why won’t it record?

  SPOCK: Might I suggest, Captain, that we first remove ourselves to a more secure sector and then address the matter of your log? That would be the … logical approach.

  KIRK: There’s nothing logical about this instruction manual. Chekov?

  CHEKOV: Keptin?

  KIRK: Try this. “With the Rec-On day flashing, press the 5 key.”

  CHEKOV: I did already, Keptin. Still negative function.

  SULU: Captain, I’m having difficulty holding course.

  KIRK: Shut down engines. Chekov, “Press the number for the day. For Sunday, press the 1 key, for Monday, the 2 key, and so on.”

  CHEKOV: Affirmative, Keptin. Still negative function. Perhaps ve should go back to page 15, vere it said to press Rec-Off time and enter two digits for hour.

  SPOCK: Captain, the Klingons are arming their photon torpedoes.

  KIRK: Engineering.

  SCOTTY: Aye, Captain?

  KIRK: Mr. Scott, we’ve got a malfunction in the log. We’re going to need full deflector power while we get it fixed.

  SCOTTY: I canna guarantee it, Captain. The systems are overloaded as it is.

  CHEKOV: Keptin, the flashing 12:00 disappeared!

  KIRK: Good work, Chekov!

  CHEKOV: Den it came right back.

  KIRK: Damn it. Analysis, Mr. Spock.

  SPOCK: It would appear, Captain, that this instruction manual that you and Mr. Chekov have been attempting to decipher was written in Taiwan.

  KIRK: Taiwan?

  SPOCK: A small island in the Pacific Rim Sector, formerly inhabited by a determined people who believed that the adductor muscles in giant clams, Tridacna gigas, conferred sexual potency. In the later twentieth century, they became purveyors of early video equipment to what was then the United States. They were able to successfully emasculate the entire U.S. male population by means of impenetrable instruction manuals. It was this that eventually led to the Great Conflict.

  KIRK: But this is 7412.6. How did a Taiwanese instruction manual get aboard the Enterprise?

  SPOCK: It is possible that a Taiwanese computer virus was able to infiltrate Star Fleet Instruction Manual Command and subtly alter the books so that not even university-trained humans could understand them.

  KIRK: It’s diabolical.

  SPOCK: On the contrary, it is perfectly logical. Their strategy was based on an ancient form of Oriental persuasion known as water torture. In this case, instead of water a digital rendering of the hour of twelve o’clock is flashed repeatedly and will not disappear until the unit is correctly programmed.

  KIRK: And for that you need a manual you can understand.

  SPOCK: Precisely. Unless …

  KIRK: Spit it out, Spock.

  SPOCK: You have Star Log Plus. A small device that permitted the Americans to bypass the instruction manuals and program their units so that they would not end up with six hours of electronic snow instead of Masterpiece Theatre or, more likely, American Gladiators.

  KIRK: Could you make one of these things, Spock?

  SPOCK: It would take more than the one minute and twenty seconds that we have until we are within range of Klingon weapons.

  DR. MCCOY: Jim, you know I hate to agree with Spock, but he’s right. We’ve got to get out of here. There are hundreds of people on this ship, young people, with homes and families and futures, and pets—little hamsters on treadmills, Jim. You can’t sacrifice them just because you can’t figure out how to program your damn log!

  KIRK: I know my responsibilities, Bones. Spock, would it be possible to beam the flashing 12:00 into the Klingons’ control panel?

  SPOCK: Theoretically, yes.

  KIRK: Do it.

  UHURA: Captain, I’m picking up a Klingon transmission.

  KIRK: Put it on screen.

  KLINGONS: QI’yaH, majegh!

  KIRK: Translation, Spock.

  SPOCK: It appears to have worked, Captain. They are surrendering.

  KIRK: Take us home, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Chekov, try pressing the OTR button twice.

  —The New Yorker, 1993

  The

  Hemline

  of

  History

  1,000,000 B.C.: Raquel Welch appears in a movie wearing a micro-loincloth. Rise of Homo erectus.

  3500 to 3001 B.C.: Linen is produced in the Middle East.

  1000 to 901 B.C.: The caftan appears in Israel.

  800 to 701 B.C.: The Assyrians, tired of wearing restrictive garments, conquer the Israelites and confiscate all their caftans. Assyrian women start dressing like Assyrian men.

  700 to 601 B.C.: Assyrian men, angry and weary of being taunted by Babylonians for dressing like their women, destroy Babylon and, to make sure that they have made their point, divert the Euphrates River and flood the former site of the city.

  600 to 501 B.C.: Invention of 501 jeans in what is now San Francisco. Peisistratus usurps democracy in Greece and sets back women’s rights. Greek women start wearing the chiton, a short men’s garment, as a long dress, creating sexual confusion that will endure to the present.

  501 B.C. to A.D. 500: Era of the Sack, a loosely fitting cloth resembling an old sack of grain. Various theories exist as to what exactly was meant by the “sack of Rome” in A.D. 476. One holds that it refers to the city’s destruction by the fifth-century social Goth Odoacer; but new evidence suggests it may be a derisive term coined by the Praetorian Guard for the frumpy wife of Romulus Augustulus, last emperor of Rome.

  540 to 553: Plague kills off half the population of Europe. Byzantine empress Theodora tries to brighten things up by introducing long white dresses, purple cloaks, gold embroidery, tiaras, and pointed shoes, prefiguring the Reagan era. Byzantine historian and gossip-monger Procopius hints in his lurid Secret History that Theodora had been an actress and prostitute before marrying Justinian I, providing encouragement for future generations of society hostesses.

  554 to 1000: Black is back! Hems hug ankles as women hedge their fashion bets pending the outcome of a possible Moorish takeover of Europe.

  1000: Hems plunge to the floor pending the possible End of the World and Judgment Day.

  1250: Hats become the rage. Louis IX is held for ranso
m by the Saracens, who demand eight hundred thousand gold pieces or the equivalent in French hats.

  1253: Linen is manufactured in England for the first time, a mere 4,753 years after its appearance in the Middle East.

  1278: The glass mirror is invented, encouraging the end of theocentrism and the rise of secular humanism as people start to think, If I was made in the image of God, how come I look like this?

  1284: The first sequins are coined in Venice, and ravioli is invented in Rome. Attempts to sew ravioli onto dresses fail, but sequins stay on. First mention of the term glitterati appears in the Venetian fashion daily VD.

  1347: Bubonic plague forces cancellation of Paris shows.

  1480: Leonardo da Vinci invents the parachute but then realizes that the airplane, without which parachutes are not much use unless your plan is to jump off the Tower of Pisa, will not be invented for 420 years. Despondent, da Vinci tosses his parachute into his prototype of the dumpster, from which it is retrieved by a Pontine marshes slattern named Vittoria, who fashions a pair of tiny panties out of it, which become known in Rome’s red-light district as Il Segreto di Vittoria, or “Victoria’s Secret.”

  1514: Pineapples arrive in Europe. They fail as hats but catch on as food.

  Mid-1500s: Starched ruff collars appear amid much beheading. One theory holds that the ruff serves as a kind of splash guard to keep blood from spoiling the headsman’s pointy slippers. Rigid padding and codpieces also appear, making future generations extremely grateful not to have lived during the Elizabethan era, despite its abundance of good theater and bear-baiting contests.

  1600: The Elizabeth R Look is in. Women pull out their hair, rub sand-paper over their faces, and expose themselves to smallpox in an effort to look like her. The queen receives daily facials and massages in a room in Richmond Palace called Elizabeth R’s Den, which servants shorten to Elizabeth Arden. Since no one knows what’s going to happen when she dies—if she ever dies—they cover all bases by letting down their hems even further. Since hems are already at the floor, they are let out laterally, creating the first trains on dresses.

  1600 to 1650: Black is back again—did it ever really go away?—this time in Venice. One theory maintains that it flatters everyone’s face in portraits; another, that soup stains don’t show up as much.

  1614: John Rolfe marries Pocahontas and takes her to England, where she is forced radically to rethink her wardrobe. She dies of nervous exhaustion three years later, an early fashion victim.

  Late 1600s: Déshabillé and négligée become the fashion as women strive to make themselves look as though curtains have fallen on top of them.

  1700s: The invention of wallpaper frees up millions of square yards of cloth to be hung on women, enabling men to boast about their wealth by showing how much fabric they can afford, again prefiguring the Reagan era.

  1746: The British defeat the Stuarts at the Battle of Culloden Moor and forbid the wearing of tartan, giving rise to twentieth-century fashion dictatorships.

  Mid-1700s: Fashion à la rhinoceros makes its appearance in Paris after the first rhinos are brought there by a circus. No contemporary fashion plates survive showing what it was, perhaps on purpose.

  1789: A French mob storms the Bastille. Royalist-style knee breeches are out. For le mob, the sans-culottes look is out, long pants are in. French painter Jacques Louis David, no tool, honors the Revolutionary need to justify political assassination with his painting Brutus. Brutus is seen off in the corner shadows in his toga, while the focus is a quartet of grieving women wearing skimpy, clinging gowns.

  Neoclassicism becomes all the rage, and women start wearing thin, draped gowns in an attempt to look like Greek statuary. In an effort to really look like Greek statuary, women mist each other with water before they go out so that the gowns will stick to them, anticipating the wet T-shirt contests in America during the 1970s.

  1792: Fashion frenzy continues as breeches-wearing aristocratic fashion victims are guillotined.

  1800s: The concept of comfort is introduced by people who have been uncomfortable for three hundred years.

  1830: Barthélemy Thimonnier, a French tailor, devises a prototype of the first sewing machine, making it a lot easier to hem.

  1874: While vacationing in Bermuda, Mary E. Outerbridge watches Brits play a newfangled game called tennis and brings it back to the United States, increasing the need to do something to make women’s clothing easier and freer.

  1890 to 1905: Women play a lot of tennis and start riding bicycles. Something has to be done about these skirts.

  1908: Hemlines rise, slightly, above the floor.

  1912: First parachute jump from an airplane. Da Vinci’s reputation is rehabilitated.

  1913: Zippers catch on, facilitating the sexual revolution.

  1918: Skirts rise above the ankle for the first time since anyone can remember.

  1918 to 1920: Influenza kills twenty-two million people. The decision to lift skirts any higher is postponed on the grounds that this is no time to go catching a cold.

  1920: The Nineteenth Amendment gives women the vote.

  1925 to 1926: Waistlines disappear (along with whalebone corsets), and hems head north above the polar kneecap. Antonio Buzzacchino invents the permanent wave. Polygamy is abolished in Turkey. Tennis “match of the century” between Suzanne Lenglen and American Helen Wills. Year of the Woman.

  1927: Long scarves suffer a setback after Isadora Duncan is strangled by hers when it becomes entangled in the spokes of her Bugatti.

  1928: The garčonne—or “boygirl”—style, named for the novel by Victor Margueritte, is in. Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Long scarves enjoy a comeback after she succeeds in not getting hers caught in the plane’s propeller.

  October 28, 1929: The stock market crashes, bringing on the Depression. Wives are told, “I hope you like your clothes, because you’re going to be wearing them for a long time.”

  Early 1930s: Hems head south as the world situation sombers, defying Wall Street husbands who told their wives they couldn’t afford any more clothes. However, more men are now wearing women’s clothes.

  1931: Hattie T. Caraway of Arkansas becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Her election has no discernible effect on fashion.

  1939: Nylon stockings appear, creating desire for more exposed leg area, higher hems.

  1941: Start of wartime clothes rationing in Britain. The Utility Look is in, the Unity Mitford Look is out.

  1941 to 1945: Women in occupied France thumb their noses at the Germans by fashioning outrageous hats, some made with real fruit; coining of term pièce de résistance.

  1943: The jitterbug craze creates the need for more leg room.

  1947: Dior unveils his controversial New Look: ballerina waists, broad shoulders, and longer skirts. Men howl angrily over “those petticoats,” but the fashion catches on and hems remain at midcalf through the 1950s.

  1957: Balenciaga sets fashion back fifteen hundred years when he introduces the chemise. It is quickly nicknamed the Sack and bombs. Christian Dior dies. Jack Kerouac publishes On the Road, paving the way for the black-turtleneck boom of the 1960s.

  January 20, 1961: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy becomes the most glamorous woman in the world. Youth is the determinant in fashion for the first time since the 1920s. The hem of Kennedy’s inaugural skirt, designed by Oleg Cassini, goes up all the way to midknee, causing inaugural poet Robert Frost to faint.

  1962: The restaurant La Grenouille—“The Frog”—opens in New York City and becomes the gastronomic center of the fashion world. Women’s Wear Daily will refer to it simply with the code letter X. The Frog’s stylish, trendsetting clientele will eventually tire of dropping gloppy food on their ten-thousand-dollar dresses and start demanding tiny portions of food without sauce on it, creating the need for cuisine minceur, literally, “minuscule portions of astronomically expensive food.”

  1963: Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa i
s exhibited in New York and Washington, D.C. Halston’s pink pillbox hat is seen by hundreds of millions following the tragic event in Dallas on November 22.

  1964: The watusi, the frug, and other modern dances resembling grand mal seizures cause people to frequent discotheques, where go-go (a corruption of gaga) dancers gyrate in cages while wearing couture minceur, literally, “next to nothing.”

  1965 to 1966: London designer Mary Quant invents the miniskirt, changing history forever and not a moment too soon. Parisian designer Courrèges knows a good thing when he sees it and puts women in short white shifts for the space age.

  Late 1960s: The microskirt, an abbreviated miniskirt, makes it difficult for women to sit down. Women, tired of standing, revert to the mini.

  1967: British fashion model Twiggy becomes a hit in the United States, popularizing the flat-chested look, making many women grateful.

  1968: Jacqueline Kennedy, wearing a miniskirt, marries Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Peggy Fleming, wearing the skater’s version of the miniskirt, wins an Olympic gold medal.

  1971: Hot pants, microshorts for women who want to be able to sit down without having to do things with their legs difficult even for Hindu contortionists, appear and disappear.

  1972: Mao jackets, designed to keep you warm and looking exactly like one billion other people, appear in the West after Nixon opens China. After the Mao jacket phenomenon breaks out at home, Nixon tries to close China, but it is too late.

  1973: The rise of blue jeans continues as U.S. textile mills produce 482 million square yards of cotton denim (originally de Nîmes, or “from Nîmes,” a city in France that has not been heard from since).

  1974: Heiress Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army; she makes a fashion statement in a ransom photograph wearing a striking militaire black jumpsuit, prefiguring the rise of The Gap.

  1976: Yves Saint Laurent stuns the world with his Ballets Russes collection, designed to make women appealing to defecting Soviet ballet dancers.

  Late 1970s: Embarrassed by the male-created Vietnam and Watergate debacles, American women decide they can do better and enter the work force in severe-looking suits.