the hall of mirrors at versailles

We watched The Queen of Versailles on CNBC Prime last week and I think I will be able to sleep with the lights off in the next day or two if I am able to get the terror out of my mind.  A better name for this documentary would have been American Horror Story, but, as we know, that name was already taken.

Watching what happened in The Queen of Versailles was much more terrifying to watch than even Connie Britton eating raw brains in American Horror Story.

The documentary is about an aging billionaire timeshare owner and his much-younger trophy wife whose fortune has been whittled dramatically by the 2008 financial crisis and their difficulty in coping with their loss of liquidity.  Sure, we all had difficulty coping with what happened when the bill for all of Dubya’s wild-ass spending came due, but I guess these rich folks had more trouble than the rest of us.  The billionaire’s credit line dried up with the banks and his empire, which was reliant on the credit the banks extended to him, suffered and his wealth was not enough to cover the bills that came due.

Perhaps most terrifying was that he had to lay off thousands of his employees and had to face realities from which his money had insulated him.  Notably that he had a house full of young children whom he and his no-longer-young wife had failed to teach discipline.  His kids had let their pet lizard die because they failed to feed it or give it water.  Their dogs defecated on the living room carpet so that everyone had to step around the poop.  Perhaps the defining moment of the movie happens when he comes home from work to find the front door open and all the lights in the house on.  Just like any father might, he questions why no one closed the door or turned off any of the lights.  Just like any father, he suggested that he would not pay the electric bill, just to teach them a lesson.  Unlike any other father, however, he fails to understand that it was his failure to bring discipline to his kids that was the problem.  The electric bill never mattered when there was more than enough money to pay it.

Versailles was the name of a huge mansion he was in the process of building—the largest single family house in the United States.  Construction of Versailles had been halted due to lack of credit from the banks, so it was just a hollow shell, the size of a sports stadium.  He and his family were forced to live in a smaller mansion pending the completion of Versailles, which we learn is very much in doubt.

What added to the horror was his wife’s inability to live a throttled-back lifestyle and a shopping trip to Wal-Mart that required multiple shopping carts.  I am sure that some of this stuff had to have been staged just to make her look ridiculous, and I am sure she played along.  However, the slapstick of the antics of his once-beautiful trophy wife failed to create enough humor to offset the horror.

The horror.  The horror.

Oh, those poor rich people.

Watch this thing at your own risk.  It is just more reality TV (although it is actually a movie and probably was not made exclusively for TV) that fails to get to first base.  I say skip it unless you have nothing else to do and have a strong stomach.

more or less miserable

Last night we watched the blue ray of Les Miserables (pardon my French) and were somewhat less than impressed.  I know this thing has had universal critical acclaim, but I have to admit that I found myself wondering why they couldn’t just talk between songs, instead of singing three-word answers.

I was asking when Leonard Pinth-Garnell was going to make an appearance.

“There, now.  That wasn’t very good at all, was it?

You may remember, Pinth-Garnell was the character played by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live.  Aykroyd hosted skits titled Bad Theatre or Bad Ballet, which featured performances by ensembles that were—well—bad.  Usually the skits featured “our own Ronnie Bateman,” a character played by Bill Murray.

Anyway, I know I am going to fall on the wrong side of this one because I have heard so much praise, but I just was not entertained by the movie.

Many of you will naturally assume that I am just some kind of inarticulate, artless hick without any culture or taste, but I am going to recommend that you may want to skip this one.

It seemed to go on and on into tedium, with everyone singing, when an unsung, spoken, yes or no answer would have sufficed.  I was too bored at the end even to watch the credits, even though I wanted to see if Ronnie Bateman’s name was among them.

hey, mr. president, some old dork wants you to call

I read this morning that Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa says that the President hasn’t called him in four years.

Waa!  Boo hoo!

Let me get this strait.  Some octogenarian senator who is part of the Republican minority in the senate, who have made it their business to try to derail our economy and punish the American people as much as they can, is expecting a call. 

Sorry, dipstick, I wouldn’t call you either.  Have you tried to phone the President, or is this a matter of waiting for his call?

Oh, by the way, I am a little ahead of myself.  Grassley will not actually be eighty years old until late this summer.

I am sure the President is a sick and tired of your crap as I am of your party trying to derail an economic recovery.  I am sure that he is just as fed up with the do-nothing congress and the filibustering minorities in the Senate as we all are.  You minorities get on our nerves.

Do something positive, Senator, and maybe you’ll hear from the White House, because, until you do, I will be the only one to respond, and I don’t matter.