Friday, August 17, 2007

The Shoe-In

Hey ho blogsters and blogsterinas, hope you’re looking forward to a fun weekend.  My mom is coming to town this evening; my sister, her husband, and their daughter are arriving early this afternoon.  There’s a family wedding up in Sonoma and I think it’ll be a good time.  The bride is my cousin and the event is at her dad’s house, which is really a pair of beautifully restored/rebuilt places that share a spacious backyard.  There’s fine art, fine wine, fine food and good folk aplenty on tap, and before the event itself they’re having a pre-party at the pool/jacuzzi just to relax everybody (because who can be uptight at a wedding when you have just been checking out the parents of the bride in their speedos?). 

The only catch is that the dress code for the pre-party is “wear interesting shoes.” Really!  There’s even a contest, I think!  And I hate to lose contests, but I’m not too sanguine about my chances in this one.  I don’t know about you, but my shoes are mostly pretty dull.  Dull-looking, anyway.  I wear them to keep me from stubs and punctures, not as conversation starters.  In fact, if I were to try to gussy up my existing shoes with hot glue and a bedazzler or something, I’m pretty sure Zach would bend heaven and earth to tear off all the ornamentation and stuff it in his mouth (if I’m lucky).  So, I’m pretty much resigned to having non-interesting-looking shoes for the pre-party.  And that means my chances of winning the Interesting Shoes contest are pretty slim.

But that doesn’t mean they’re nil.  See, I’ve got a game plan.  I’ve decided to make my dull-looking shoes interesting - not visually, but substantively.  Guh-what?, I hear you wonder in your blogly minds.  Guh-THIS, I respond brightly, referring you to the below-appended item, which I will print out tomorrow on nice paper and keep with me for purposes of disabusing anyone who accuses me of not having interesting shoes:

HURACHE VAMP: Curriculum Vitae
“Though Tongues May Wag, Be Constant In Support”

Construction:
* Natural Uppers (yak-hide and Thompson’s gazelle)
* Artificial Outsole (latex grown in “zero-g” space station conditions)
* Laces: Limoges, France – Jacobin workshops (2nd Empire)

Prior Owners:
* Mr Bojangles
* “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (pre-shoelessness)
* Neil Armstrong (Apollo capsule casual wardrobe)
* Steven Hawkins (minimal wear)

Education:
* U. Istanbul: BA, Art History (personal ornamentation); BS (cum laude), Quantum Mechanics (variable states of grommet); awarded special recognition for work to eradicate footwear deficiencies in Coptic slums on Crete
* U. Sao Paulo: Masters, Musical Composition (Indigenous pedal-driven percussion orchestration)
* All Soles College, Oxford University: Doctoral Diplomate, Applied Philosophy (the Inner Sole)
* Fellow, Rand Institute, Santa Monica: trans-national implications of fastening, lacing and the double-knot

Employment:
* Apprentice (line-walker), Southern Pacific Railways
* The Apprentice, Donald Trump Productions ("shoe-in")
* Antarctic Veterinary Clinic: Chief of Podiatric Surgery
* Toledo Mudhens, Toledo Ohio: Equipment Manager
* National Linguistic College: Special lecturer (Tongue-twisters)

Authored:
Digging to China (nonfiction, 1967); Finding Shipwreck Gold in Your Spare Time (self-help, 1972); My Arch-Nemesis (non-fiction, 1979); The Erotica of Oceania (graphic novel, 1985); Deconstructing Serbia (policy anaysis, 2001); The Life and Times of Pope Posh Spice (nonfiction, 2004)

Affiliations:
Oddfellows Lodge; Goodfellas Lodge; Rotary Club; Internal Combustion Club; External Combustion Club (defunct); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (emeritus - costumes), International Association of Bikram Instructors; Society for Creative Anachronism (consultant on futuretrending)

So that’s how I intend to persuade a bunch of wedding guests that my regular ol’ birks or steve madden sneakers or timberland streethikers or whatever goes on my feet tomorrow are actually interesting.  And looking over that list, I don’t even care if I win the contest anymore.  I know my shoes will be the most interesting.  I’ve walked enough miles in them to know by now.