The Best Costume for Today

I'm a lazy cow, posting the second You Tube video in a row on my blog. I should just drop out of the writing game altogether and watch movies all day. Starting with this, a snippet from Grey Gardens, that 1975 documentary about Little Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother living in that old wreck of a mansion on East Hampton. It's a riveting film, and yet nothing happens.

You've seen it, haven't you? Tell me you've seen it. Well, I'll admit, I watched it for the first time last night, and now I'm simply mad about Edie. Did you know she's first cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? Both girls attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, which explains their shared East Coast, patrician vocal intonation.

I'd like to apologize to the Kennedy family right now for showing this clip on Bad Girl Blog because Edie herself was a very good girl indeed. She refused a marriage proposal from the richest man in the world, J. Paul Getty, most likely because he was a womanizing cad who got married five times, and Edie only ever cared about three things: swimming, dancing and the Catholic Church.

Still, Edie had some bad-girl backbone when it came to family matters. "You see, in dealing with me, the relatives didn't know that they were dealing with a staunch character," she says in another scene in the film. "And I tell you if there's anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman... S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There's nothing worse, I'm telling you. They don't weaken, no matter what."