Princess Luciana, cont’d.

Filed under:Daily Trash, Princess Luciana — posted by Donna Lethal on May 5, 2007 @ 12:07 pm

Dear reader Sarah had commented that she, too, had tried to track down the elusive PLP. I replied: You too? Well, even the fellas at work have tried to track her down - once these books arrived (I kid you not - I got them ONE CENT on Amazon!) everyone was riveted … the last we found was an interview from the New York Times from about ten years ago. Conversely, one of the beautiful people she quotes at length in the Beauty and Diet books was Talitha Getty and her “health food diet” - which would have been about a year or two before she died of a heroin overdose. -DL

There is more. She had divorced “Prince Pignatelli” (is that the greatest? Prince Pignatelli! Mavis always wanted to be Princess Matchabelli) then married her book’s publisher, Bert Avedon (no relation to Richard) hence the name change. After the NY Times interview (I should just purchase the damn thing), her trail ends. I will repost some of my other myspace choice PLP blogs soon. If you google her, someone was doing a blog “as” her consisted solely of book quotes but it hasn’t been updated in some time. I wrote the author, praising them on their brilliance, but never got a reply. And, oh, I have an extra autographed copy of the Body Book! Meanwhile, here she is in her heyday:

Princess Luciana Pignatelli

Filed under:Daily Trash, Princess Luciana — posted by Donna Lethal on May 4, 2007 @ 2:30 pm

is our higher power. If you haven’t read any of my myspace blogs, you are in for one hell of a treat! She has graced us with three books and Mavis Martini and I are proud to call them our bibles. She now has a wikipedia page.

Bless Ghost Traveller for finding these brilliant books. I’ve taken the liberty to post their choice selection of comments:

Princess Luciana Pignatelli (Princess of where is never really established) collected these pearls of wisdom from her high brow social circle of rich bulimic plumbing eroders and pill popping beach trolls - circa 1970. In between blowing their elderly multi millionaire husbands and shtupping the pool boy, these philanthropic angels of Olay took the time to bless us, the Average American Midwestern Fatty, with the magical knowledge that got them the keys to the kingdom.

“It does not matter what you start with, try to get by on nature alone past 30 and you are finished.”

“In my ex-husband’s house, everyone was unhappy, even the parrot. It was my fault, too. With two strong personalities, either you pull together or you destroy each other. What does this have to do with beauty? Lots!”

“Every woman over 30 needs a homosexual in her life.”

“For protection midsummer when the sun is strongest, I try to keep my face in the shade. Last year in Sardinia, where we all ended up nude on a deserted beach, I put my bikini on my face.”

“…the rage a few years ago with the chic Paris homosexuals, is this: Take the white of one egg, a teaspoon of the best olive oil, beat, and apply for 20 minutes. Remove with hot face towel, lace trim optional.”

“…with an active life, one tries to keep hair so simple that it can be washed at home if necessary.”

º”As for split ends, I twist as much hair at a time as will go around a finger, then quickly singe the ends that stick out and will not twist, with a lit candle.”

Chapter 5: Have a Lift

“I understand that there is a Paris doctor who does eyelash implants. Next time I go to Paris, I intend to look into it.”

“…not always sitting with her legs crossed. (You tend to cross your legs with the same one always on top. In the long run, the inner thigh of the under leg gets flabby as a result.)”

” As for losing weight, Waldner suggests that the best times are when the moon is in Taurus or the sun is in an Earth sign.”

Beauty by astrological sign: Aries - “must have frequent dental check ups”; Taurus - “should marry man of means”; Gemini - “often the face is too long or the nose is too long or big”; Cancer - “tends to be lazy about beauty and should be encouraged to make the effort”; Leo - if ambitions not fulfilled, can have difficult menopause”; Virgo - “Remains surprisingly youthful despite hypochondriac tendency”; Libra - “rarely gets fat”; Sagittarius - “is torn between bright, amusing men who are good talkers and her desire for a solid social position”; Scorpio - “hypersexual and often attracted to men who are her inferiors”; Capricorn - “always well turned-out and insists on quality in clothes”; Aquarius - “often slightly neurotic and with fragile health”; Pisces - “feet are weak point and pedicures essential”

There are the cheetahs of this world, and the hippopotami.”

º “The beautiful people eat well and they are not fat.”

º”‘If you can stay on vegetable bouillon one day a week, it’s marvelous for you’, says Françoise de la Renta, wife of Oscar, the New York fashion designer. “You drink three quarts in twenty-four hours, preferably while resting, because lying down makes it more diuretic.’”

º”…when you walk, you pretend you have a gold coin between your buttocks.”

º”You see, I’m very gourmande, which means I should be given all the more credit for not getting fat.”

º”I am a mineral water fiend, like most beautiful people…”

º”Even the airlines, while insisting that their flight personnel keep trim, do not dare weigh in passengers along with their baggage, though I think that would be a lovely idea. Why should I have to pay for thirty pounds of excess baggage when the man next to me does not pay a cent for his fifty pounds of excess flesh?”

“…the Simeons diet, which consists of 500 strictly balanced calories plus one injection per day of human chorionic gonadotropin, a substance extracted from the urine of pregnant women.”

“For heightened perception without drugs plus rapid weight loss, nothing beats the oldest known treatment for obesity: total starvation.”

And finally, there is an entire chapter devoted to not allowing your infant children to become “little fatsoes.”

Here’s a teaser from the diet book jacket:

“How do you deal with a social calendar that presents all too many chances to overindulge at dinners and parties?”

“How does a woman with a busy schedule fit in the exercises that help her stay trim?”

“How can a working woman cope with business lunches?”

“How can a mother guide a teen-ager away from puppy fat?”

“Whatever your diet problem - there’s help for you in the pages of this lively and useful book. One highly entertaining chapter presents experiences of celebrities who have stayed at “fat farms” ranging from spartan English hydros to the luxurious beauty farms like Maine Chance and the Texas Greenhouse.”

Here’s some chapter titles:

put a buzzer on the fridge
how do they always look so good?
take it off
exit fat city
weighing in at the fat farrm
a little round is sound
baby fat has to go
wheat germ or garbage bombs?
men who measure up

Sadly, this was a disappointment - all cottage cheese (ugh!)

but this is on the way …

St Peter Chanel

Filed under:Daily Trash — posted by Donna Lethal on @ 2:23 pm

Mark found this great site that contains a “Catholic Quiz of the Day” among other gems. I must make it a regular feature! These must have been written by one big queen! Hmm … do you know the answers?

What does Mary the Mother of God have in heaven that we will not have until the Final Judgment?:
A. a soul
B. a spirit
C. a body
D. a halo

I like how it says “vote” and not “answer.” Do you get to change the final outcome, election style?

Other brain teasing quizzes include:

St. Erasmus (d. c. 303) is more commonly known as:
A. St. Ember.
B. St. Elmo.
C. the Easter Bunny.
D. Friar Tuck.
E. St. Earlobe.

You know I’m torn between St. Earlobe and the Easter Bunny …

What was the Celtic Rite?:

A. this is another name for the Mass celebrated on St. Patrick’s day
B. the privileges granded to the Irish due to their early acceptance of the Faith
C. the Mass as it is celebrated in Ireland and Scotland today
D. the religious ceremonies of the Boston Celtics celebrated before every season
E. the variety of rites used in the churches of Ireland and Great Britain before the acceptance of the Roman rite

Naturally, the answer is “D”, the Boston Celtics.

Who is the patron saint of parish priests?:
A. St. Peter Chanel
B. St. Gregory of Tours
C. St. John of God
D. St. John Vianney
E. St. John the Apostle

Hmm … I’d go with St. Peter CHANEL!

If the stole is the special sign of a priest, what part of the monastic habit is the sign of a monk? :
A. sandals
B. hood
C. scapular
D. t-shirt

Sandals? Now we know for SURE!

‘it was a graveyard smash’

Filed under:Daily Trash — posted by Donna Lethal on May 3, 2007 @ 9:17 pm

He’ll “face discipline” but of what kind?

HAMILTON, Ohio (AP) — The family of a woman who died in an apartment fire was given the wrong body, and the mistake was not discovered until after they buried her, an Ohio coroner’s office said.

Butler County Coroner Richard Burkhardt said Wednesday his office takes responsibility for the mix-up.

“It is our fault,” he said. “It is our responsibility and we apologize to the families involved.”

‘i’ll be down in a few moments, just as quick as i can.’

Deborah Reed, 52, died in the fire Friday. But the coroner’s office, about 20 miles north of Cincinnati, released the body of a 23-year-old woman who died of a drug overdose Saturday, Burkhardt said.

It was not clear how the mistake happened. Burkhardt, who ordered that the younger woman’s body be exhumed, said an employee in his office will face discipline.

Tom Zettler, managing director of Zettler Funeral Home, said it is not his policy to check on the bodies of fire victims.

“You trust the coroner to determine the cause of death and so forth, and that the correct body would be released,” Zettler said.

Reed’s son, Brian Winkle, said family members did not look at the body before burial, and apparently no one else did either.

Winkle said a family member learned of the mix-up after receiving a call from a friend who lives next to the cemetery. The friend said a body was being exhumed by detectives and the coroner’s office.

“I came out here and asked a couple of people who work for the cemetery. They were covering up the hole,” Winkle said. “One of them finally told me apparently the woman buried wasn’t my mother.”

And for those of you who haven’t seen it, watch this immediately! It’s one of the greatest movies ever made:

The funeral business gets a giant raspberry in this wickedly wacky, resplendently ridiculous farce based on Evelyn Waugh’s macabre comic masterpiece and directed with inspired verve by Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). But the American way of death isn’t the film’s only target: sex, greed, religion and mother love are also in the crosshairs of its satirical shots. Robert Morse plays a bemused would-be poet who gets entangled with an unctuous cemetery entrepreneur (Jonathan Winters), a mom-obsessed mortician (Rod Steiger) and other bizarre characters played by such adept farceurs as John Gielgud, Robert Morley, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle, James Coburn and Liberace.

***

Richardson’s film was advertised as the movie with something to offend everyone, and although these days it looks pretty tame you can see how it would have had the censors up in arms 35 years ago. Morse is the Brit abroad who encounters all the worst aspects of the funeral business while attending to his uncle’s burial in California - he falls for a cosmetologist, but has to compete with a grotesque embalmer (Steiger). With a disparate cast including Sir John Gielgud, Tab Hunter and Liberace, Richardson’s film is an outrageously funny parody of southern California life, with Steiger at his most memorable.
Mr Joyboy
Rod Steiger as “Mr. Joyboy” - I met him once and told him, “I LOVE Mr. Joyboy!” and he looked at me, horrifed.

When shopping fever “hits”

Filed under:Daily Trash — posted by Donna Lethal on @ 5:13 pm

When shopping fever “hits”

photo by Apollo Sputnik

Let it Bee

Filed under:Daily Trash, bees — posted by Donna Lethal on @ 4:53 pm

The site’s under construction (as Citizen Robot admonished me, “you are NOT another wordpress weblog!”) - but for now it’s a template and I can’t erase it. This weekend the real design should be done.

Mavis and I were just lameting the lack of bees. I know, you say, bees? They sting! But they also make honey, build combs, pollinate flowers, and make that lovely sound on hot summer afternoons. Now, they are disappearing and the food chain is all disrupted … where is Gloria Swanson when you need her?

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“In 1974, Swanson starred in the infamous TV movie The Killer Bees - playing a hag who keeps a horde of deadly bees that she unleashes on her enemies.”

Some bees are sexy, like the Honeybees!

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or Honeycone:

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even though the word is really “honeycomb,” who cares? Maybe they made it “cone” so you didn’t think it was a hair product, and sweet, like ice cream.

Master of Disaster Irwin Allen made “The Swarm” which, when pronounced by local Boston radio announcers, was “The SWOM.” I saw it at the drive-in:
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sometimes, being a bee can turn tragic, like Susan Cabot, who played:
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she was murdered by her own son who was a mentally disturbed dwarf! You can read about it on Findadeath. Thanks, Scott Michaels!

Sadly, Susan didn’t have a beehive because maybe it would have protected her from a dwarf with a baseball bat. No one could ever hit Dusty on the head!

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Naturally, the drummer in The Honeycombs, Honey Lantree, had quite a substantial beehive:

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Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo, and John Belushi all sang of being King Bees …

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and Queen Bees were played by both Joan Crawford,

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and The Lady Reed!

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Here’s to the Spirit of the Beehive! To Bee or Not to Bee - that is the question.


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