Teeny Manolo

Everyone knows cats are jealous of babies. Now at least we know what they’re up to!

Now, I’m not sayin’ it’s true, what they say about curry. I’m just sayin’… if you’re pregnant but not yet all packed for the hospital, it wouldn’t hurt to go for the moussaka instead, you know what I’m sayin’?

But they do say that about curry, among other things:

Many people swear by sex, but it has to be with a man, because it is only they who can produce the active hormone. It won’t exactly come as news to anyone that they often have to be badgered into this with promises of other things, such as ice cream or money. C’s friend said in his NCT class, “This prostaglandin - can it be administered orally?”

Curry, by the way, only works as an alternative to sex. If you have a curry and then sex, neither of them work. [editor’s note: yeah, tell me about it! Oh, they mean for inducing labour! Ooops, my bad.] Likewise, curry and pineapple, since cooking the pineapple destroys the enzyme. If you had the pineapple as a raw garnish, that would work, but since you need to eat quite a lot of pineapple, it would have to be a huge curry. Pineapple and sex work fine together, and by happy coincidence, there is a pineapple tip in the food section of Cosmo Best Sex Tips of All Time, though a) I’ll tell you one thing that this book doesn’t say in any of its tips, and that’s “First, get pregnant and wait nine months. This will make you all the more attractive,” and b) this particular pineapple does, I’m afraid, have to be tinned. I’m afraid I can’t give you any more details, because I am shy.

I am not so sure she’s all that terribly shy, come to think of it. After all, she reads Cosmo, and you know what they say about Cosmo girls!

Now, I’m just sayin’ … it’s a strange coincidence, perhaps nothing more than a strange coincidence, but that article came out on a Friday morning, and by the following Monday no fewer than like, half the celebrities in the world gave birth. And the other half got pregnant. Except George, although I’m sure he was involved at some point of the equation, although he’s not saying anything without his lawyer present. And Angie was talking about picking another sprog out of some exotic catalogue, but then she’s always doing that, curry or no curry.

And I’m just sayin’ that this woman here happened to be serving curry at the dinner party when she went into labour a couple of weeks early and gave birth between courses. It appears you have merely to associate with curry for it to have its full effect. Fortunately, it must have been an extremely powerful curry, because labour lasted exactly eight minutes in total.

…as she prepared to present the main course - a home-made lamb curry - she felt her first contraction.

And just eight minutes later, after three pushes, little Trinity was born weighing 6lb 1oz.

But Mrs Kendrick hadn’t forgotten her duties as a hostess. As she was taken to hospital as a precaution, she yelled: “The rhubarb crumble’s in the fridge!”

A) Martha Stewart would be proud of her!

B) Can we get her recipe? We’d make a mint!

Sometimes I wonder, how are other countries dressing their kids?  I decided to check out Japan, because the Japanese are no slouches in the fashion department.  After a few minutes hours of research, I found the Narumiya Company, a popular high-quality clothing manufacturer in Japan that produces a couple of European-inspired clothing lines. Upon first glance, I fell in love with them.

I mean, how could I not?

The designs are so cute, I want to have a daughter, like right now, so that I can buy these for her.  The above are from their Pom Ponette line for toddlers.

But then I went to a different portion of the website, and found these from another one of their lines, Mezzo Piano.

I adore these looks, they are a bit over the top, but I love them just the same. I mean, it’s a photo-shoot, right?  Things are allowed to look a little different in a photo-shoot.

Now we are getting into really artsy territory with the hat o’flowers, but look at that ribbon! I can ignore the headdress because of that brown ribbon.

Erm, I’m starting to get a little uncomfortable here. I keep reminding myself, photo-shoot, things are allowed to be, uh, different.  She’s depressed about her grades or something, that’s all!

This photo is definitely not ichiban in any way.

But do you see the embroidery on the skirt of the blue dress? I’m almost willing to forgive the fact that the two models look like the black-sheep cousins of Alice in Wonderland, ready to smack her around a little if she doesn’t meet their demands to give up some of that mushroom stash. 

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, these clothes are not available here in the US and have limited distribution in Europe.  At an average of 12,000 yen, these clothes are a bargain.  That’s about 100 US dollars, and listen, I thought of the idea to get on a plane and buy them and bring them back here already.  My finder’s fee is about ten percent if you beat me to it.

But I’m just not sure I can get past those Lolita-inspired pictures.  What do you think, are those exploitative or are you willing to look past the advertising because the clothes are so fab?

Anything to keep the child support coming, eh Denise?

Now, I’m not malevolent. I don’t really, deep-down, want to believe that celebrities are insane.

And yet, they make it so easy.

Here is Hollywood punchline Denise Richards and her two lovely daughters, attending a Halloween party in Beverly Hills. We shall, of course, overlook the obvious pun, which I have in fact and in actuality already made elsewhere, and focus rather on: 1) the fact that Denise looks good for her, not naked, not high, yep, pretty good for Denise Richards, but moreover and furtherto upon 2) the fact that of all the potential Halloween costumes in the entire world, rife as it is with a vast selection of Halloween costumes of all shapes, sizes, and jokey celebrity references, Denise Richards has chosen to dress Charlie Sheen’s little girl up as

a cheerleader.

Thank you to the Manolo, raincoaster, and everyone who sent their postive thoughts our way.  It worked!  We are out of danger, and all signs point to it staying that way.  Please keep in mind the hundreds of thousands displaced, and hope that the winds, which are the main reason the fires are out of control, die down very soon.  Let us keep repeating “onshore flow, onshore flow” because that is what is most needed.

Now, what better way to keep my mind off of things than to hunt for an item for the newest edition of One Bid?

My friends, I present to you the most expensive, blingiest potential choking hazard you will ever see.

Because nothing says you love your infant daughter like a Swarovski-encrusted pacifier!  Regular pacifiers are for suckers.  Get it? Suckers?

Hey, cut me some slack, people.

The cabin fever we are experiencing here at Casa Glinda is torture. As soon as Glinda can leave the house without a face mask, the era of tacky jokes will be over, I promise.

But really, infants can be startlingly similar to crows, in that they are fascinated by shiny objects, and I could totally see this working to distract them.  The downside is they would probably try to put the wrong side of it in their mouths.

And it seems that for some people, I must reiterate that you are not allowed to go over the actual retail price.  If I was to ignore this crucial rule, the logic on which the universe is partly based, life as we know it may cease to exist.  Just ask Bob Barker.

Guess away! 

Now, it must be admitted that this comes to us from the conglomerate responsible for not a few of those frivolous products used as weapons in the gender and peer pressure wars. Nonetheless, it rocketh, so it gets posted.

When I was Violet Affleck’s age, I had to play with nickles! Three miles, uphill, in the snow!

Glinda speaks!

Quick summary, for those of you who didn’t tune in to yesterday’s episode: Glinda lives in Southern California and spent much of yesterday watching wildfires creep closer and closer to her house.

They couldn’t open the windows because of the hurricane force winds bearing burning ash.

She watched transformers explode, scattering PCBs in columns of blue flame!

And she was worried about the blog!

Honestly, we love her but sometimes the girl has no sense of perspective!

Here’s the update:

Chicken Little has left the building…for now, anyway.

We are back at home, the power came back on around 4:30pm, and the winds around our house have died down considerably. Hundreds of trees uprooted, mostly beautiful large firs, oaks, and pine trees. Our home was never in any imminent danger, although where I live has lots of chaparral and large brush areas, so there is always a chance of embers being carried by the wind and igniting. There were lots of fire personnel prowling around, looking for any flare-ups that might occur from a stray ember. Totally a surreal scene here. The big fire in Irvine was being carried away from us by the direction of the wind.

Other people, not so lucky. Hundreds of homes lost, although miraculously, minimal loss of life. The entire SoCal region is an inferno, or at least, it certainly feels that way when the smoke and ash are everywhere, blotting out the sun and turning the moon brown.

Thank you for the well-wishes, and let us save our prayers for all those who are still in danger, of which there are many. For now, we are blessed to count ourselves safe, and unless the winds kick back up again or some crazy pyromaniac starts another fire nearer to us, we should be fine.

You will recall our fetching model for last week’s Friday Caption Contest. The judges have torn their hair out trying to decide which of the excellent captions should win, but they have finally cast their votes and it’s now time to announce the winner.

Phyllis Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Congratulations to the winner of our tightest contest yet! Don’t let the glory go to your head, okay? As always, if you’d like your Teeny Iman featured in the Friday Caption Contest, just email a jpeg image to raincoaster at gmail dot com.

Manolo says, Glinda the Good, who lives in Orange County, has just sent the following message to the Manolo.

Our power has been out since 10:30pm last night, and it isn’t looking good. I’m typing this at the library. The winds here are incredibly bad, trees are knocked over everywhere and basically it is like living in a hurricane. They clocked the wind speed in the canyon we live in at 85mph. So, we are not sure when our power is going to be restored, and we may have to relocate for the night if the power is not back on soon. We’ve already probably lost all the food in our fridge. It is too hot to stay in our house, and we can’t open the windows up because ash is being blown everywhere due to all the brush fires that surround us on three sides. Fun times.

And now the Manolo must ask that the readers of the Teeny Manolo please keep Glinda in their thoughts and prayers, that she and her family and friends be delivered safely from this disaster.