Phoenix Rising

SCARLETT’S LETTERS: Phoenix Rising

Dear James —

I’m sharing a comment someone made about my last piece, in which I was being a little hazy about my love life. Mopey Reader wrote:

Firstly, thank you for thinking of me. I do have some questions. Sometimes, if people use a number of metaphors and/or similes, or if they confuse the two the same way many mistakeningly [sic] use the term ironic in place of coincidental, I get confused and miss the main point. Is there a new lover or is this a metaphor for the art fairs? At first I thought the article was about a new person that you met but then it turned out to be about other things so I don’t know if that person is real or not.”

Hat Tricks

TUTTLE MODE

by James Tuttle

Gentle reader,

Have you ever seen the show My Fair Wedding, in which wedding planner David Tutera takes a delusional bride-to-be’s mess of a nuptial and transforms it into an admirable occasion?  I recently watched an episode where he had to deal with an “Indonesia meets Las Vegas set in a Winter Wonderland” theme that some poor stupid girl and her dumb-ass husband had come up with.  I must say, he pulled it off beautifully.

Today's gratuitous shirtless hunk is Joe Manganianello, the good werewolf from "True Blood," who just announced his engagement, which makes this picture more of a cogent excuse for slobbering than might appear. Still, slobber away.

I became intimately familiar with My Fair Wedding when our dear friend Lisa stayed a few days with us last month and watched back-to-back episodes until they finally cast the lead actress in the “good twin versus bad twin” Lifetime movie she was costume designing and she had to go to work.  Lisa and I have been planning her wedding for several years now and it has undergone many transformations, from a Borgia castle in Italy to a ballroom at the Biltmore, so I personally know a bit about this wedding business.