Copley Plaza Lights

It's after work. You've shopped for gifts and necessities at two CVS's, one organic supermarket, Filene's Basement, and Borders. You are carrying heavy bags up Dartmouth. You almost don't notice the lights of the Copley Plaza, and even when you do, your hands are too cold to stand still and take a picture that isn't blurry. But you try anyway. Happy Holiday shopping!

Tina Frey's Necklace Is Not in My Dresser

My favorite necklace has six beads and lives at the ICA online store. It will not be coming home with me because it costs $245.00 (non-member) or $220.50 (member). If money was no object. If objects were no money. If no money was red opaque handcrafted resin beads in the shape of a special, very expensive candy whose parents were a jelly bean and a lifesaver.



















Could the grandparents to my fantasy necklace be this vintage acrylic toy for $75? (At that price, six of them would be even more expensive than the ICA candy.) Mine were red, naturally, and called Click Clacks, but as you can see, these are Ka-Nockers. The toy had a dangerous reputation. I heard they were taken off the market because some people used them as weapons. I pictured somebody's head getting clacked and hid mine away from the neighborhood bully named Mackie.


It didn't take me long to find a cousin to my necklace on Etsy. Less high end. More affordable. (Although it's sold out.) This opaque frosted resin bead necklace from Epheriell's shop. Now that's sweet!

Mayle excerpt: Up the Agency

After reading Peter Mayle's "The Vintage Caper" (see yesterday's post), I discovered that he started in advertising first as a copywriter, and left 15 years later as a reluctant executive, according to PeterMayle.com. His nonfiction is just as cheeky as his fiction. See for yourself. From the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon, the opening paragraph of "Up the Agency":

"Advertising has been variously described as an art, a profession, a sinister instrument of mass persuasion, and a ludicrous waste of money. It hovers on the fringes of big business and show business, of sports and politics, of sleaze and respectability all at once. It is impossible to ignore, and yet most people deny that they are influenced by it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In either case, conclusive proof is hard to come by because of all the other elements involved in persuading millions of people to make a particular choice. It is this—the delightfully imprecise nature of advertising—that makes it such a happy hunting ground for the articulate young person who is convinced he or she has a great idea. Maybe it is indeed a great idea, or maybe it is a piece of twaddle artfully presented, but who's to know? There are no foolproof methods of judging, no truly reliable methods of prediction, no guarantees of success. It's a funny business."

—Peter Mayle, Up the Agency: The Funny Business of Advertising

BCBG Mayle: "The Vintage Caper"

Never mind that The Vintage Caper is light on caper (spoiler alert: freelance insurance investigator Sam Levitt steals back $2.3 million worth of stolen wine), completely lacks suspense (no one stops him), and except for the fingerprints on the bottles, neither the crime, nor its motive, is ever verified (Can you tell I'm rereading Sherlock Holmes, the master of the scientific investigation?). Because that's not why I read Mayle. Over the rainy Thanksgiving weekend in Bar Harbor, I rushed through the copy left behind by my oenophile uncle, before my stepfather could get his hands on it! Why? For the well-researched, humorous travelogue style Mayle trademarked in his breakout memoir of 1989: A Year in Provence — cheeky insidery descriptions of all pleasures French: wine, food, quirky characters, and glorious locales, preferably in Provence.


Being a white wine drinker, Mayle's wine details were lost on me. But any red wine lover, or curious oenophile, should be spellbound by Sam's visits to several of the great Bordeaux châteaux in search of clues to the stolen bottles from the great vintages of premier cru ("first growth") claret (red blends) ('53 Lafite Rothschild, '61 Latour, '83 Margaux, '82 Figeac, '70 Petrus).

What I will remember from this book is the explanation of the initials BCBG, used to describe Sophie Costes, Sam's French contact from the insurance company. For years, I've seen the fashion label on shoes and clothes, but never known that it meant "bon chic, bon genre," or "good style, good attitude." A term that could easily apply to Mayle: the man who wrote about buying $1,300 hand-built shoes in London for GQ (included in "Acquired Tastes," 1993), the man who sparked the American obsession with the south of France, and who was awarded the Legion D'Honneur in 2002 for his efforts to promote France.

p.s. Another Mayle title on my radar, a book he wrote in 1993, after 15 years as a "Mad Man": "Up the Agency, the Funny Business of Advertising."