About an hour or so ago, I suddenly realized I had no butter to go with the monster artichoke I've been looking forward to all day (in the course of which I successfully taught my 1B course for five hours, and nobody died), so I hopped into my jalopy and rumbled off down the hill to the market.
This downhill stretch is interesting at 7PM on a Saturday because although I live in comparative squalor, I'm right below the fanciest/snarkiest "development" in the desert. During the season, fancy cars parade in and out of there more or less nonstop; on weekend evenings, they're all going out to dinner.
Instead of the usual stream of Bentleys, though, tonight I found myself behind a 1962 Jaguar XKE convertible, top down, British Racing Green. Like original VW Beetles (and my 1965 Cobra the other day), these cars once were everywhere but now are nowhere; you never see them. They're famous for needing tuneups about every 20 minutes, even back when they were new, when Joan Baez--barefoot at the time--pulled $20,000 cash out of her bag for one off the showroom floor in San Francisco. Now they're over $100,000. Stupid, I know, but still it's a hell of a car.
And this one was being compentently driven by a nice-looking, late-middle-aged guy with a blonde in the passenger seat. "Who do you have to BE," I wondered as I do so often, "to ride around in a car like that in the warm desert night with the top down? Obviously not ME! So--who?" Several elaborate traffic maneuvers later, I was able to pull up next to the gorgeous thing at a stop sign and scrutinize its occupants. Here's the blonde:
Not "sort of" -- it was absolutely Jennifer Aniston, chewing a thumbnail, staring off into the distance, and looking miserable. I think the driver was her dad, John, the tv/movie director.
"Oh," I thought. "I get it! OK. Not me. Not even close. And don't wanna be. Oh poor thing. . . " etc. She recently dumped Brad Pitt, the Cheating Bastard. I would have shouted, "You GO, Girl!" But she was with her daddy so didn't need my help.
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