It's all true.
A woman was on the news last night, begging the public for information about a lost ring. But this was no ordinary woman.
She looked like the human version of an Abyssynian cat - Almond eyed, dark complected with a long neck and long, graceful eyelashes misted with recent tears. She was pleading her case from what appeared to be her living room, a palatial estate with expensive furniture and brilliant, oversized art all perfectly placed and looking like a page out of Fine Living. She wore large turquoise earrings, an embroidered silk scarf wrapped around her shoulders and spoke with the refined tones and formal gestures of the insanely wealthy class.
The ring. The ring was displayed on camera in a blurry but still impressive photo, probably from a jeweler's catalogue. It featured a positively gargantuan yellow diamond in the center, surrounded by absolutely Herculean white diamonds on either side. According to the story, she'd taken it off momentarily while strolling through downtown Pasadena, slipping it into her pocket. Only on arriving home did she realize the horror: The ring was gone. The pocket, empty.
So here she was, this African American Princess of Pasadena, on primetime TV news imploring the public to help her in her search for her precious, multimillion dollar diamond ring. She did follow up during her in-camera interview that the sentimental value was worth far more than the monetary one, as she'd treated this stunning gift from her husband as a talisman emblematic of both her survival from a recent bout of cancer and her desire to bear children (cue sympathy piano). There were shots of her digging through leaves in the gutter near where she'd parked her car (or where her chauffer had parked the Maybach). Other shots of her combing the city, putting up "LOST!" signs (no doubt with her lawyer's phone # as a contact). The city had even deployed it's Water and Power workers to open manholes and climb down into sewers, should the jewel have tumbled out of her pocket and down a drain.
Finally, with the pinched look of someone attempting to do yoga with a bad case of the runs, she ended the interview on the cliche spiritual caveat that should the ring not be found, it was "as the universe deemed," and that the lesson would be to learn to live without such material posessions. If you looked closely you could swear her cheek was twitching.
As if to add ironic insult to gutwrenching injury, her husband had only just that week started to seek out insurance for such a priceless item, but hadn't signed a deal before the calamity. Too bad no one at the news station bothered to dig into that little bit of odd timing. Didn't she get the memo? It was supposed to happen Thursday!
The bit ended with the newscaster, who, with a smarmy smirk and raised eyebrow, declared that a "substantial reward was being offered for its return." You can almost hear the echo of a hundred thousand cars start up throughout the Los Angeles basin: "Get in the car, hon. We're headin' to Pasadena."
Directly after this, and just before going to a station break, the news then offered a tease of its next story: A base jumper was missing. These are the guys and gals who get dropped off on a mountain top from a helicopter and freestyle it down on skis or snowboard. Flashing up on the screen was a picture of a gorgeous hunk of a man who very well could have graced a Calvin Klein Fragrance billboard above Sunset, across from the Bar Marmont.
His name was Brad, this base jumper. He'd gone to Yale and was a junior partner in a downtown law firm. It turned out one of his clients was Amali Bindui, a Tunisian businessman and real estate developer. Amali made millions from trading; stocks, bonds, oil futures, gold, gems. Buying land and building subdivisions. He'd come under government scrutiny for allegedly laundering money for the Russian mafia, but charges were dropped when the government couldn't come up with the evidence. Now it was all contracts drafting and the occasional lawsuit from a former employer out to squeeze the boss.
Oh, and he'd just recently given his wife a ring as a gift. A ring with an enormous yellow diamond.
A woman was on the news last night, begging the public for information about a lost ring. But this was no ordinary woman.
She looked like the human version of an Abyssynian cat - Almond eyed, dark complected with a long neck and long, graceful eyelashes misted with recent tears. She was pleading her case from what appeared to be her living room, a palatial estate with expensive furniture and brilliant, oversized art all perfectly placed and looking like a page out of Fine Living. She wore large turquoise earrings, an embroidered silk scarf wrapped around her shoulders and spoke with the refined tones and formal gestures of the insanely wealthy class.
The ring. The ring was displayed on camera in a blurry but still impressive photo, probably from a jeweler's catalogue. It featured a positively gargantuan yellow diamond in the center, surrounded by absolutely Herculean white diamonds on either side. According to the story, she'd taken it off momentarily while strolling through downtown Pasadena, slipping it into her pocket. Only on arriving home did she realize the horror: The ring was gone. The pocket, empty.
So here she was, this African American Princess of Pasadena, on primetime TV news imploring the public to help her in her search for her precious, multimillion dollar diamond ring. She did follow up during her in-camera interview that the sentimental value was worth far more than the monetary one, as she'd treated this stunning gift from her husband as a talisman emblematic of both her survival from a recent bout of cancer and her desire to bear children (cue sympathy piano). There were shots of her digging through leaves in the gutter near where she'd parked her car (or where her chauffer had parked the Maybach). Other shots of her combing the city, putting up "LOST!" signs (no doubt with her lawyer's phone # as a contact). The city had even deployed it's Water and Power workers to open manholes and climb down into sewers, should the jewel have tumbled out of her pocket and down a drain.
Finally, with the pinched look of someone attempting to do yoga with a bad case of the runs, she ended the interview on the cliche spiritual caveat that should the ring not be found, it was "as the universe deemed," and that the lesson would be to learn to live without such material posessions. If you looked closely you could swear her cheek was twitching.
As if to add ironic insult to gutwrenching injury, her husband had only just that week started to seek out insurance for such a priceless item, but hadn't signed a deal before the calamity. Too bad no one at the news station bothered to dig into that little bit of odd timing. Didn't she get the memo? It was supposed to happen Thursday!
The bit ended with the newscaster, who, with a smarmy smirk and raised eyebrow, declared that a "substantial reward was being offered for its return." You can almost hear the echo of a hundred thousand cars start up throughout the Los Angeles basin: "Get in the car, hon. We're headin' to Pasadena."
Directly after this, and just before going to a station break, the news then offered a tease of its next story: A base jumper was missing. These are the guys and gals who get dropped off on a mountain top from a helicopter and freestyle it down on skis or snowboard. Flashing up on the screen was a picture of a gorgeous hunk of a man who very well could have graced a Calvin Klein Fragrance billboard above Sunset, across from the Bar Marmont.
His name was Brad, this base jumper. He'd gone to Yale and was a junior partner in a downtown law firm. It turned out one of his clients was Amali Bindui, a Tunisian businessman and real estate developer. Amali made millions from trading; stocks, bonds, oil futures, gold, gems. Buying land and building subdivisions. He'd come under government scrutiny for allegedly laundering money for the Russian mafia, but charges were dropped when the government couldn't come up with the evidence. Now it was all contracts drafting and the occasional lawsuit from a former employer out to squeeze the boss.
Oh, and he'd just recently given his wife a ring as a gift. A ring with an enormous yellow diamond.
posted by morphitologist at
5:13 PM
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