Monday, February 01, 2010
This isn't the Martha Stewart we're used to
Ben Beagle
The aging, semi-hysterical retired reporter rides shotgun with the greatest station wagon driver of them all down the rocky road of life. Mondays in the paper's Extra section, steady as she goes.
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In our You-Ain't-Seen-Nothin-Yet Department this morning we have the strange case of Martha Stewart and the stripper's pole.
Right. Instead of showing us -- in a kind of uppity way -- how to make a chef's salad out of bits of stuff you ordinarily throw in the trash, there is Old Martha grinding away like she was working a shift in East Baltimore a long time ago.
Wearing -- gasp -- tight, black pants.
Right, all of you purists out there: I know that the burlesque theaters didn't have stripper's poles at that time. Stripping was more primitive in those days.
And there was a bad band playing "Lullaby of Birdland" with a lot of strategic drumbeats.
At least, that's what I hear.
Is the pole a portent of things to come?
Anyway, even when Martha is grinding right there on the telly, she continues to look like she is better than most of us, including professional strippers and your Aunt Zelda.
From the expression on her face, you'd think Martha was out of sorts with someone who didn't know squat about dicing tomatoes.
Not only that. Martha does a turn on a stripper's pole, the action of which was not designed to send your average male into a fit of passion.
I mean it's not the kind of thing you'd talk about at the breakfast table. Or at lunch or supper.
Is there a hint here of unspeakable things to come?
Like, is Old Martha, who currently peddles everything commercial except cars and airplanes, getting into the stripper's pole business?
Like, maybe the vibrant mother of three and avid PTA supporter just down the street is ordering a stripper's pole on the Internet and using it while waiting for the clothes dryer to go full cycle.
And being sloppy in setting up a birthday party for the 6-year-old and forgetting the use of votive candles because she has hurt her back on the pole.
Will Martha, who is obviously made of money, purchase a strip joint in New Jersey and name it the Bada Bing after the establishment where Tony Soprano's gang used to meet?
I hope none of the above happens.
I hope our housewife gets off the pole and never forgets that Martha wouldn't plan any kind of party, or funeral or tailgate party, if she didn't have a whole lot of votive candles.
No. I have no idea that Martha might work votive candles into a strip joint theme.
Wouldn't surprise me, though, to see a lot of vegetables carved into cute little animals instead of having pretzels and peanuts to go with the booze.
Ben Beagle's column runs in Monday's Extra.
