Crystal, Zapruder, And The Most Important Things In Life
You know you're living in New York when you check out the price of a pair of shoes and say, "Hey, $590! That's not bad!" even though you still can't afford them. YT and I went to the kooky Koolhaas Prada store on Saturday to drool and weep over the coats and kicks that bring a gleeful, yet slightly insane bit of perspiration to my poverty-stricken forehead. We fantasized about the day when we'd circle the Prada floor with a "helper" who'd follow us with a notepad marking down everything we pointed at and said we wanted, which was everything. "I'll take two of those, one of those, two of the snakeskin stilettos, one green, one brown, size 7, and, in a 52, one of those really gay men's bomber jackets over there..."
In fact, YT and I were both fondling the soft brown leather on one of those really gay men's bomber jackets, when I heard the saleswoman, not ten feet away from me, say, "How are you! How can I help you!" She spoke at a high volume that seemed unnecessary. So I looked over my shoulder, ready to sneer at her (while she wasn't looking), and saw that the person she was talking to was Billy Crystal.
There is something surreal about seeing Billy Crystal standing in the middle of one of the intimate downstairs rooms at the Prada store. You expect to see someone with some level of celeb status, naturally. Had it been Owen Wilson, or Tom Cruise, for example, it wouldn't have been so strange. But Billy Crystal? In Prada? Looking like a curmudgeon? Trust me, it was weird.
We had a delightful time in Prada, even though I left waving my arms and demanding that we be able to buy things there if we wanted to, and even if we didn't want to. The point was money. With which to shop. Imagine if we had the kind of bank where we could drop $1,500 on a pair of pants like it was our daily cup of coffee at Connecticut Muff. Imagine. And then still be able to pay rent that month on our 30,000 square foot loft and the quaint little house upstate. I can't even imagine. Well, I can a little bit.
Since we had to leave Prada empty-handed (although there was talk of some sort of scam, like saying we were from the cleaning company and were there to pick up what they had in stock that needed to be gussied up, and trying to convince them that there actually was a cleaning company, and that this was new Prada policy and maybe they didn't get the MEMO), I went straight into a civilian shoe store a couple of doors down and bought a pair of black and pink rubber rain boots for $32 and some change. Then we went into Sephora where you can pocket Prescriptives Virtual Skin Foundation in Medium, Benefit's Ooh La La Lift Under Eye Therapy, and Stila Lip Gloss in Rose Shine, which surprisingly turned out to be a near perfect color for me. Not that I'm into stealing designer cosmetics from huge stores in Soho that don't have theft detectors by the exits, or anything.
When we came back down to earth, YT and I discussed possible Halloween costumes in anticipation over a big party for the occasion. After mulling over a long list of truly hysterical ideas, I figured out who I'm going to be -- at around 1:30am on Sunday morning, after watching a now historical episode of "Saturday Night Live." Done. Best Halloween costume ever.
