Dressed Up

Last night we went to the Bishop's Dinner, an annual event put on by the school board to raise money for, right now, a new building over at the Jesuit Centre that's going to serve as a retreat and ecology centre for students. The Jesuits are all about the ecology. They have a very large farm and lots of walking trails through their property, and it's all well-maintained and very beautiful. The Bishop's Dinner is a posh affair, and several of the city's mucky-mucks attend it and drop some serious coin at the silent auction. For the record, I did bid on a wine fridge that we sort of need, but I didn't pursue the bid since I don't think we could have put the wine fridge into the car. Well, that and the fact that we don't have any spare cash right now, what with my unemployment being secured and my EI benefits running dry.

When you go to a posh affair here, you get to wear the best black beaded sparkly dress, the strappy sandals and the good makeup. You look fantastic in a found-by-chance dress that fits superbly, and you don't look out of place when you get all done up. Better to be overdressed I always think .... but last night I fit right in, and it was excellent to do that. I looked good but so did almost everyone else there, and there was some serious done-uppedness going on. I didn't do much to my hair for example, and without the backcombing and hairspray I didn't quite meet the grade that was set by the other babes in our midst. Hub was very popular at our table, being the only man, and being in an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. His hair is relatively long and curly, and The Sartorialist did a short feature a while ago on whether a man with longer hair should wear a suit, but personally I don't have a problem with it and Sart's series on the men confirmed my liking for longer hair. Not on everyone of course, because there are some for whom long hair is a crazy mistake, a decision made after too many trips to a bad barber leaves one with a bad taste in the mouth for hair-cutting and thus the hair grows unkempt and unmanaged, either to a curly tangled rats nest or a shaggy greasy mop of lankness, depending on the straightness quotient. Oh, am I passionate about the proper kemptedness of the hair, especially on men? You bet. (and am I having a too-obvious affair with the -ness suffix?)

The gathering was held at the Italian Canadian Club, which meant a five-course meal and wine at the table, but I really really wish they would find a different house wine, because what they forced us to drink is crap, barely suitable as cleaning fluid (the white) or tomato sauce builder (the red). With relief, I noted that the bar provided a better selection.

Catholics, luckily, can't find anything in the Bible that says you're not supposed to drink.

There were a lot of Italians there last night, which is no surprise, seeing we were at the Club, Italians are Catholic, and there are many many Italians living here (much like the rest of Southern Ontario). At one time this city was a Mafia retirement community, so if you went to a wedding and decided to take a baseball bat to the bushes around the church, you'd knock out a few surveillance cameras, and maybe the same number of RCMP officers with them. As it turns out, more than half of the staff who teach at our childrens' school are Italian, and since we live in the (old) west end of the city, most of our neighbours are Italian...even the ones we're not related to. Notably, some of the more well-known Italians and the Mayor were missing, since they were off in Toronto signing a pact between a city up in Treviso and our city.

Comments about the Mafia might be suitable here.

There probably isn't a point to this post other than the fact that we went out last night, had a good time, ate a lot of food, drank crap wine, talked to a lot of people and had a laugh when our 23 year-old Seminarian was so bent on going home with the 30GB iPod that he stood at the table guarding his bid for the last 30 minutes of the auction. Somebody ought to talk to that boy about coveting.