Wednesday: Prada seahorse thongs

Mondays. 10-11pm. MTV. It’s officially my new favorite hour in TV.

Though some may rightly question its designation as “reality TV,” Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County is at least, as its subtitle suggests, more real than The OC. For example, the types of life-or-death, I-could-just-die moments on LB run along the lines of, say, having to bite your tongue while your friend gets extensions just like yours, or facing down your romantic rival while getting a mani-pedi before the big dance — not, say, shooting your boyfriend’s brother, and oh wait, that was after you were held at gunpoint by a deranged pal with a really bad crush on you. One’s a soap opera, the other’s simply operatic. Though I never went to dances in SUV limos (well, they didn’t even exist when I was in high school), I can relate. I feel Jessica’s pain. Don’t even try to tell me that high school wasn’t as potentially tragic as La Bohème.

On My Super Sweet 16, meanwhile, the genius is that these horrible, spoiled girls think that they are the epitome of chic and cool, while in fact they are simply horrible and spoiled. They are so wonderfully oblivious — self-delusional perhaps. Lesson number one: Money doesn’t buy you taste. (Then again, my dad never handed me wads of cash for shopping trips to Miami, so really I can’t say for certain.) This week’s princess (as she called herself) went to YSL to look for a dress for her 16th birthday blowout — and found the outfits there far too tasteful. Last week, The Triplets (as their friends oddly chanted out at their party) thought “sexy” meant dressing like Playmates and Vegas showgirls. (And can I just say that they had no business showing their bellies?)

Call it schadenfreude, but I feel a perverse sense of satisfaction on behalf of my 16-year-old-self, reinforcing my belief that the self-proclaimed cool girls now aren’t so different from the self-proclaimed girls cool then. Only then they didn’t have MTV to expose themselves to the whole world. Damn, I was born before my time.

*****

This blog is meant to be an escape — a tribute to the frivolous things in life — but the utter devastation we’re seeing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina puts everything in stark perspective. I for one am going to forsake (okay, put off buying for a month) one pair of Manolos to give to the Red Cross.

Monday: black Gucci snakeskin peeptoes

I have a friend who’s an animal lover — not quite on the level of a PETA paint-thrower, but enough that I get nervous when I see her in the colder months. I mean, would she really believe that my crocodile shoes are made from roadkill? That the beaver that provided my cuddly sheared stole really was a terrible danger to trees everywhere? That my Astrakhan sweater vest did not come from aborted lamb fetuses? (For my own sake, that had better be true. The first time I heard that rumor I almost lost my lunch all over my baby lamb.)

So it’s going to be a long winter playing hide and seek, because how on earth am I going to explain this item on my wish list?

Nancy Gonzalez mink and crocodile bag

Friday: pink Prada mules

The Hermes sample sale’s been going on here in New York this week. I’ve gotten amazing things there before — some great riding boots for like $180, a bracelet, ties for my dad and scarves galore — but this year I’m sitting it out.

Sure, part of the reason is I’ve been way too overbooked this week to deal with the crazy lines, but that never stopped me before. (In fact, one of my partners in crime one year took such a long lunch “hour” that she was convinced she would be fired — and her boss was convinced she’d been kidnapped.)

But could it be that Oprah’s keeping me away? If you recall, her BFF Gayle King told reporters back in June that Oprah had been, horror of horrors, turned away at the Hermes boutique in Paris, shortly after closing time, even though others shopped inside. And Gayle was convinced that it happened because they were black. Worse, the apology Hermes issued days later was less than heartfelt. They even claimed to be in possession of a security tape that would prove their innocence — but of course it would not be available to be viewed by the public.

So was Oprah really having a Crash moment — or was she having a “Do you know who I am?” moment?

I decided to take a very unscientific poll: I went straight to a French friend — a very chic, very connected publicist who works with the couture houses — and asked what she thought of it all. She pointed out that (1) most French people don’t know who Oprah was; (2) the French aren’t anti-black, because there just aren’t that many black people there, and besides, they’re more anti-Arab than anything; and most importantly (3) the help at Hermes are simply rude. All very good points indeed.

I’d venture to guess that the Oprah incident (and the show she’s going to do about it this fall) will cause a bigger dent in Hermes’s U.S. sales than the French opposition to the Iraq war ever did (remember “freedom fries”?). Just losing Oprah’s business probably did — I mean, let’s think about this. She’s worth what, $1.3 billion? Do you know how many Birkins that could buy?

In any case, whatever my true motives are — and I can’t say I know for sure — I’m skipping the sale (and my checkbook thanks me for it). But that doesn’t mean that if the Hermes store calls me tomorrow to say that I’m finally at the top of the waiting list for my Birkin, I wouldn’t be there in two seconds flat. I have a conscience, but I also have needs!

Wednesday: straw Prada wedges

I had a near-death experience this weekend.

Well, okay, not exactly near death, but all my shoes did flash before my eyes.

I was in Minneapolis on a work trip last week, and on my first (and last) free day there, I decided to do — what else — some shopping. (I also decided to visit the Mall of America as a sociological field study, but that is another story to be told another day…) So midway between looking at the rather small selection of Prada shoes at Neimans and refueling at Jamba Juice, I suddenly felt this shooting pain in my right foot. I was wearing some Tods sandals — flats, with those bumps on the bottom of the sole that always trick me into thinking they are somehow therapeutic — and while I am always prepared for some amount of shoe discomfort (for me, “not terribly uncomfortable” is as good as it gets), this was beyond the pale. The pain shot through the top of my foot, between the ankle and the big toe, and it was almost paralyzing. Worse, it seemed to be most intense when I wasn’t putting weight on my foot. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no way to tell how I could adjust my movements to prevent the pain from coming back.

And that’s when my shoes started flashing before me. Was this, at long last, the end for me — the end of fashion? I thought of all the stilettos-slash-torture devices sitting in my closet and wondered if I would ever see them again. I fought back tears. Would I now be sentenced to a life of… of… orthotic shoes?

As I hobbled around the rest of the day, I paid even more attention than usual to the shoes people were wearing. I tried to spot the comfortable shoes, and I despaired at the sight of so many Easy Spirits. There is only so far you can go with Prada Sport, after all. Then I thought I’d better make a trip to Taryn Rose’s store — she was an orthopedic surgeon after all, and her shoe designs, I supposed, did beat Easy Spirit.

Of course, by Monday I was back in New York and back to my old tricks. The pain had subsided at 30,000 feet somewhere over Pennsylvania, so I threw caution to the wind and slipped on the high heels. Isn’t that what happens when you have a near-death experience, anyhow? You realize that you have to appreciate the here and now. That you can’t take it with you, and surely not in three-inch heels.

Monday: cream Louboutin lizard slingbacks

Throughout my life, guys have made me cry in so many different ways: the pull-on-my-pigtails and push me on the playground method… the teasing me in front of all of the sixth grade about my training bra method… the asking my best friend out instead of me method… the “it’s not you, it’s me” method…

And then there was the one who made me spout tears just by talking about simple interest.

I made the mistake of confessing that I carried a balance on my credit cards, and that I took years to pay off my college loans. What could I do, I told him — I have a weakness for shoes. But being the tough-love guy that he was, he lectured me that had I doubled up on my loan payments from the get go, and foregone all those shoes I couldn’t afford at 22 and so ended up on my credit card balance for months on end, until after I paid down the debt, I could have saved so much on the interest that I would’ve been able to buy all those shoes anyway — and lifted the debt monkey off my back.

Well, who the hell wants to hear that?

My response, of course, was tears. Lots of tears. And in between sobs, I managed to tell him that I had my own brand of new math: Fiscal Responsibility - Instant Gratification = Me - Shoes = No Fun. And even Bono couldn’t save me from this debt crisis!