Letters To Parade: And Can You Tell Me About Prince Charles' Tux?

There's an old saying about curiosity, a cat and murder. There's also an old saying that says that if you have a weird, possibly criminal (in Utah) fetish, you should probably avoid writing to Parade Magazine about it, but if you do, make sure that you use a false name and that the fetish somehow ties into a significant media event in the coming weeks. Or, if you happen to be a staffer at Parade, you get a press release about an upcoming media event -- in this case, the release of the book A Dress for Diana by David Emanuel from Harper Collins [And let me just say, Harper will buy a book about a fucking dress and, yet, they have summarily rejected every book I've ever written? I mean this literally: they rejected Fake Liar Cheat, Living Dead Girl and an earlier version of Simplify, plus I think they rejected my new book that's out on submission, too...so, yeah, Harper Collins has made a career out of rejecting the fictional stylings of Tod Goldberg, but they're going to publish a book about a piece of cotton? They would rather publish a book about an outfit than anything I've ever written. What is the world coming to when I, an award losing and winning author, cannot beat out a manuscript about a piece of fucking material! I thought the Jews ran the media and here I am losing out to a book about a fucking piece of cloth! I know someone from Harper Collins must read this blog, so I demand an answer!] -- and then you simply make up a fake name and write a question that calls into mind a person with very serious personal issues.

You see, apparently there may or may not be a fucktard named Alec Murphy living in Lexington, KY who has, shall we say, a bit of a, shall we say, thing about Princess Di. Well, not Princess Di specifically, because that would be simply weird -- she's dead after all, and she was the World's Princess, but still having a thing for someone who is dead, even if Elton John & Bernie Taupin did re-write a perfectly good song to make it about her, only to make it forever a terrible song, thus always ruining the perfectly good song in my mind, not unlike how I feel when I hear Every Breath You Take and then recall Puffy turning that into that godfuckingawful tribute to Biggie, is a bit morbid and wrong -- sort of like jerking off to old pictures of Bette Davis.

Where was I?

Right. Alec Murphy of Lexington, KY. Alec probably doesn't exist, so I'm not too worried about upsetting his apple cart here, but I am concerned about people like Alec Murphy, of which I presume there are legion. It's not that Alec likes women's clothes -- there are plenty of people who do like women's clothes and as long as they aren't hurting children or animals in their quest to wear or admire them, hell, you do what you want to do until Dick Cheney sends you to an overseas death camp as an enemy combatant of the Bible -- but that there's something deep inside of him that is ignited by women's clothes. To whit:

July 29th is the 25th anniversary of Diana and Prince Charles' wedding. It reignited my curiosity about Di's gorgeous gown. What did it cost, and where is it now?

I watched the wedding of Di to Charles with my Nana, Poppa Dave and sister Linda in the kitchen of Nana & Poppa Dave's house in Walla Walla. I was 10 that year and I presume if Alec watched the wedding and still gives a fuck about it, that he must be about my age or Linda's. Now, Linda was 12 at the time and I think she might have kept a scrapbook of clippings about the wedding. Or maybe she didn't, but I'm sure she did for the wedding of Luke to Laura, and either way she was deeply interested in both of those weddings [And here, another side note: Author Thom Racina, who lives out here in the desert as well, wrote the Luke and Laura wedding for General Hospital and, I swear to god, the fattest sweatiest women in the world simply swoon when he informs them that he wrote the words that conjoined Laura to the man who raped her.] and has never once mentioned to me how that dress ignited in her anything near curiosity. Want to know what was ignited inside of me during the wedding? A blistering anger that I was missing a new episode of Solid Gold. At the time, I loved Marilyn McCoo, so few can blame me for this anger. But in Alec Murphy, curiosity was ignited. Curiosity bubbled out of Alec and has continued to flow like lava for 25 long years. I wonder what else has ignited curiosity in the fucktard known as Alec Murphy for 25 years? Moving out? Getting a place of his own? The smell of old shoes at thrift stores? EBay auctions for used socks? Princess Di fan fiction? Elton John (with a guest appearance by Eminem, naturally) fan fiction? The way Parade Magazine smells when he pulls it out from in between those handsome glossy ads for Black Angus and Fry's? We may never know. Or, I may get a letter from his lawyer and I'll see if he has some answers. Thankfully, however, Walter Scott is able to at least answer Alec's questions:

"We presented a 'gesture bill' for just 100 guineas [$2,025 in 1981]," says David Emanuel, who designed the gown with ex-wife Elizabeth. On July 24th, they'll release  A Dress For Diana (Harper [We Won't Buy SHIT From Tod Goldberg, But We Will Buy A Book About A The Dress A Dead Woman Wore When She Married That Man She Didn't Love] Collins), about its three-month creation process. The gown is stored at Althorp, the estate where Di is buried.

Anyone like to place a wager on how long it is before we see the words "American Arrested For Breaking Into Princess Di's Crypt In Search Of Her Wedding Dress" on the CNN terror crawl?

Comments

[Glenna]

I felt your pain, man. Right after I quit laughing my ass off. Okay, I lied. I haven't actually quit laughing yet.

[Dean]

Okay, so at first I thought you were being a bit over the top with your complaining about the book, but then I read in Walter Scott's deathless (in the same way that a vampire is deathless) prose that the entire book really IS about a dress. One dress. Yes, fine, one dress designed to give the proles happy little quivers between their chapped thighs, but still, one dress. A. Single. Dress.

[Graham]

Don't be dissing Fry's ads. Reading their Friday circular is the highlight of my week. Added bonus: I work right across the street from one of their superultramegastores.

Although their "mail-in rebates" probably qualify as fiction.

[Josh Maday]

Well, if Alec can keep his ass out of Althorp and have some patience, he can probably get an embalmed piece of the Princess herself in just a few short years.

Say 'eew', but you know it's coming.

[tex]

Can't believe you skipped right over Marilyn vos Savant's brilliant "can't hug a television."

Personally I already have a little piece of Diana jerky. It cost me 500 francs (about 100 euros in today's currency) but it was worth every centime, bought it from a well-known Divisionnaire in la Police Judiciaire who sliced off a few choice bits in the confusion. I'm told it was a little morsel of her thigh, but that's probably what they told everybody who bought a piece, just to jack up the price. With my luck it's a chunk of the driver's vodka-soaked liver. What care I, it's a piece of history nonetheless.

Hope you and Wendy are swell in the new digs.

Your pal,

Tex

[Danny Barer]

Isn't Alec Murphy the alter ego of Robocop?