"Out of all the peanuts in the world, Mr. Peanut is the only one who makes an effort, with his jaunty hat and monocle and so forth. The other peanuts just lie around," said Ned, while we ate peanuts that he roasted himself, and I don't know what to tell you about The New Cooking Ned.
"I know," I said,"and who has he got to impress, if all the other peanuts aren't wearing shoes." I ate another peanut, because, you know, peanuts. "Do you think Mr. Peanut is gay, or not at all gay, just a dapper dresser like Dick Whitman?"
"Well, he does seem to be wearing tights," said Ned. I think he meant Mr. Peanut and not Dick Whitman.
"Maybe he's not trying to pick up a girl OR a boy peanut. Maybe he's trying to attract another nut altogether."
"He's getting a little cashew on the side," Ned said.
I'll bet Simone deBeauvior and Jean Paul Sarte didn't have conversations this deep.
Hey! How are y'all? I have been busy doing stupid things, and I will not recap them all today seeing as many of you are making scalloped potatoes and having your annoying families over and such. I know you're sneaking onto the Internet with your fifth drink of the day, and don't have much time.
But I would like to tell you about my dumb eye makeup.
The other night I was sitting around here reading a beauty magazine, and please see above where I am Simone deBeauvoir, and they had an eyeliner idea. "On the inside of your lower lashes, use silver. Then use a really bright color in the middle, followed by a dark color and WING it out the outside corner of your eye. You.will.look.stunning," the magazine told me.
Sadly, I had all three of those eye pencil shades in my take-it-to-work cosmetic kit, as opposed to my at-home-no-one-needs-this-much-makeup-who-are-you-Baby-Jane vanity. I glopped all those eye pencils on, then screamed to work without taking time to look, so you can imagine my pleasure when I got to the work bathroom and saw it looked like I'd had some kind of mental breakdown.
HI! I HAVE ALL MY FACULTIES! WHAT COLORS UNDER MY EYE!!?!! DO YOU HEAR THE KETCHUP TALKING IN THE FRIDGE? I LOVE MARMOSETS. THERE IS NO PAIN, YOU ARE RECEDING.
Good gravy. And I had to do pesky things like WORK, plus I had no eye makeup remover there, so I was, you know, like that all day. I had plans to have dinner that night with my friend Not Wes, who inexplicably you all have started calling The Naughty Professor, so I guess that'll be his blog name now. Anyway he came down to my desk to firm up our plans, and I said, "I want you to know, I'll be changing this eye makeup before dinner."
"Okay," he said. He really did. "Okay." Not Oh, what're you talking about? Not Gee, June, it looks fantastic. No. "Okay." Like, thank GOD. Because the Professor, here, has a reputation to uphold and he does not want to be seen with Rainbow Bright eyes.
At lunch, I screamed over to Zoe's Kitchen, which is delicious if you've never been there. I go out to eat at lunch maybe 1% of the time. Usually I drive home and let the dogs out and get interested in an old TCM movie, and I realize I just said "movie movie," but didn't know how else to put that. Maybe "I watch an old movie on TCM," but I still just said movie movie, really. The point is, I get into it then have to return to work. I have seen the front end of a lot of movie movies.
But anyway, on that day, with my Eyes of Many Colors, I headed to Zoe's Kitchen, where of course.
OF COURSE.
I ran into my friend Hibiscus Wilson, who was there with a coworker and who similarly has a reputation to uphold, and there was her friend, old paint swatches eyes running up to her. "HI, HIBISCUS!" I said colorfully.
"Oh. Um. Hi, June. Wow. This is my...friend June," she said reluctantly to her friend.
You have no idea how bad I wanted to say, "Nice to meet you. I don't mean this about my eye makeup." But I abstained. I felt the less said the better.
After work, I had every intention of fixing my makeup, but I got busy, and then I realized I didn't know where the restaurant was, so your pal the NBC peacock just started heading downtown in her full makeup regalia.
Right then, Ned called. "Are you on your way to your dinner?" he asked.
"Yes, but I realize I don't know how to get there, and the GPS says no route."
"That's cause it's right on the railroad tracks," said Ned, who then tried to use funny words like "north" and "left" and "up the hill" to try to get me there. Has he MET me and my fine sense of direction?
"Look," said Ned, who was clearly growing tireder of me by the minute and thank heavens I have these giant bosoms so I can keep him. "Meet me in my parking lot. I'm in the car, too, and I'll just meet you and lead you there."
So that's how EVEN NED got to see my pretty pretty subtle pretty eye makeup. I pulled into his lot, and he got out and came to my window.
"Wow, you look really nice," he said.
And that is why Ned is the person for me.
Naturally,
June
