Be Brave Project, Day 47; L'Argent L'argent, Toujours L'Argent

One of the first--if not the first--films I ever saw outside of the home was the 1939 MGM Production of The Women (I've written a blog entry on the utterly inadequate re-make). The film was screening at the Children's Museum of Chicago, for some reason, and was showing in a cordoned off area on the South Side of a large ramshackle room. The other activities varied in quality: some were rather inferior and involved paint and string and metal bit o' crap that you'd glue to paper. Others were quite good and produced a very large neon green ashtray that hung around the house for decades.

You could get your picture taken in a Model T Ford, which was the highlight of the event, though sadly it would soon be over-shadowed when my father took us to an Auto show where they had an old car from The Godfather that was riddled with bullet holes.
The excitement of it!!

Ah, Chicago.

But to return to The Women, after I'd finished making my 13 pound green ashtray and had my picture taken in the Model T, I'd wanted a little peace and quiet from the hurly-burly of my fellow children. . .so I stepped behind the curtain, where a bunch of mothers and au pairs were quietly hiding from the same children, and I watched the film.

From the first I thought it was excellent because all of the characters were introduced by first showing which animal they resembled: Joan Fontaine--who I never did like and was her usual cud chewing self in this film--was represented by a deer. Roz Russell by a spitting cat, Joan Crawford by. .. I can't quite remember. A snake perhaps? If one can imagine a big eyed snake in a bias-cut dress and a frizzy perm, that was J.C. in the film.

But my favorite character of all was the Countess, who appears half-way through the film on a train to Reno. The Countess is older, puffy-eyed, with gem-encrusted rings jammed onto her sausage fingers--but she had a girlish belief in Love (and in the healing benefits of Champagne). As she sipped from her flute and told Norma Shearer about her latest gold-digging young husband she'd intone, "Ah, l'amour l'amour, toujours l'amour!"

Sadly, I have no gem-encrusted rings or girlish belief in the power of love, but I do have all sorts of financial messes to sort out--my taxes, as I wrote recently, seem to be very happily sorted out. I am awaiting a reply on a credit card application. I used some of my tax money to pay off another credit card bill in full. I also set aside one month's rent in a money market account for "Oh My God" money. But student loans are due again, starting on the 11th. And I have an appointment with a financial advisor this morning.

No idea what to say to the guy, apart from pointing out that I'd prefer to have more money rather than less. And that I'm not going to make any decisions today, which I think will hardly break his heart. If I'd only had a little more confidence around money I too could have bought myself a McMansion when mortgages were being given out to ham sandwiches.

One think I don't get about this credit crunch: Why is Citibank putting so much pressure on people to apply for credit cards? I understand they make a lot of money on them, boy do I understand that--but every phonecall to Citibank nowadays ends with their people doing a hard push on one of their cards. I don't like it. I am picturing the Citibank bankers as un-humbled, watzing top-hatted around town like Eddie Arnold in the picture above.

And I don't know what to say to financial advisor guy. I suppose listening is the best option, and then taking it from there. . .

I wonder if that's how the Countess chose her husbands. Uh oh.

By the way, here is a link to a lovely elder lady's blog--she's going to be the smash hit of the internet: Margaret and Helen