American Beauty – JENNIFER RICHARDSON

A Charitable Affair

Posted on October 3, 2008

So far husband is still employed, smoking only tobacco, and staying away from high school cheerleaders. (I’m not even sure if they have the latter in the UK.) He is instead doing the respectable country gent version of pulling a ‘Kevin Spacey in American Beauty.’ This consists of drinking beer in a barn with other men and two strippers imported from the big city likes of Birmingham. It’s all for the sake of a cancer charity so how can I say no? And it leaves me free to jeer with abandon at Sarah Palin when Channel 4 broadcasts a recorded version of last night’s debate.

I’m sure the men in the barn wouldn’t mind a striptease from Sarah. As pointed out elsewhere, her up do and glasses lend themselves to the clichéd image of the librarian/teacher/insert safe woman career here, unfurling her hair and whipping off the glasses to reveal the sexpot within. Sarah is welcome for a bit of Cotswold burlesque anytime. I’d just prefer she stay away from The White House.

Random

What’s in a Name?

Posted on September 29, 2008

Amber. It sounds like a mean cheerleader. And wedding and motorcross sport event planning sounds exactly like the kind of job Amber the mean cheerleader would have when she grows up. That or an aggressive realtor in the model of Annette Benning’s character in American Beauty.

The real life Amber who taught my wedding planning course in Bath this weekend looked the part of a former cheerleader. Slim with blond hair and blue eyes, she also would have been the homecoming queen and student body president. She is the cheerleader you couldn’t help but love, nothing like the mean Heather or obnoxious Tiffany types.

As if to reinforce the high school paradigm, there was one man in my class of ten women, and he looked exactly like Rod Whited, captain of the mighty Green Wave football team. Then he opened his mouth to speak and all of a sudden Rod Whited had a Yarmouth accent, shattering my trip down memory lane. All the better, there was a mood board and some craft glue calling my name.

Sixteen classroom hours later I am the holder of a diploma from an accredited professional wedding and events planner institution. I’ve also become some kind of cliched nightmare of an aspiring small businesswoman. Today at work I toggled back and forth to a surreptitious Word document where I was constructing nauseating prose in the third person for my website profile (Bob Dole says…). Tonite I procured every possible variation of my company domain name, then spent the rest of the evening fiddling with the Vista Print free business card online editor. I’m now the one in danger of becoming the Annette Benning character in American Beauty, albeit a bit fatter. I won’t worry until husband quits his job and starts lifting weights, smoking pot and chasing a high school cheerleader.