A while back we attended a charity event at an estate in Beverly Hills that was on the market for $125,000,000.  And no, that is not, unfortunately, a typo. This home, a brand new, 45,000 square foot villa with inlaid marble floors, frescoes, leather walls and gallons of gold leaf, is modeled after the Palace of Versailles.

I’m not kidding.

Although guests weren’t allowed inside (it was a garden party), the owner is close with a friend of mine, and my friend took us on a hush-hush private tour of some of the rooms, like the 40-seat theatre (with adjacent candy room), the ballroom, the wine cave, and the catering kitchen, which is larger than our entire house and had racks of flatware and china for 200 – always a plus if your friends work up an appetite trying to find their way back from one of the 15 bathrooms.

“Holy crap,” I thought as I stood in one of said bathrooms, where a masterpiece was mounted over the toilet, “I’m peeing under a Renoir.” What kind of person builds a home like this? What kind of desperate need to impress is this?

As we wandered back through the gardens and out to the pool, my friend walked up to the lady of the manor and introduced us. A well-preserved fiftysomething blond, she was standing with her gorgeous 26-year-old Italian boyfriend who appeared to have fallen out of the pages of the most recent Vanity Fair. I noticed that she was holding a plastic iced tea cup, so I said, by way of conversation with someone who had about six more zeroes behind her name than I did, “Oh, a Starbucks fan, huh?”

She glanced at the glass, and laughed heartily. “Are you kidding me? They charge three bucks for an iced tea. I make my own!”

I am not a car snob. 

I’ve owned a higher-end hybrid SUV for several years, and while it does make me feel good to drive a “luxury” car (burled wood! Seats that have everything except Magic Fingers!), I am SO not attached to it. I’m basically a bargain shopper who buys everything on sale, with coupons, plus extra early bird savings for showing up at the store at 5a.m., puffy and wild-eyed, wearing two different shoes.

 But the company I work for (which is admirably green-conscious) offers us cash incentives to buy hybrids – and the highest incentive, for the Toyota Prius, is $4,000.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I cannot pass up $4,000 in free money. Even to buy a car I don’t really like.

 Well, it’s not that I don’t like the Prius, it just lacks some of the amenities of my other car.

 Sure, I get the satisfaction of getting 50 miles to the gallon. And of thumbing my nose at less ecologically-conscious drivers, whose selfishness is so 2005.

 But climbing out of a Prius at the valet stand just doesn’t have the same cachet. Washing your car at the $2 do-it-yourself place doesn’t feel as gratifying – “See, I’m just like you common folk!” – when you’re in the same car as half the patrons. Driving through McDonald’s and smiling at the cashier as if to say, “I’m not too good to eat crappy 99-cent burgers” loses something when you’re in an economobile.

 Apparently, I AM a car snob. God, I feel so ashamed of myself.

 But I would look so much more attractively ashamed in a Lexus.

I work for a TV network which is housed on a movie lot in LA. It’s a wonderful place to work, although we rarely have either of the types of moments most associated with movie lots: groups of costumed gladiators and nuns scurrying down the street to a soundstage, or people doing blow off the hitch of a makeup trailer.

 What we do have is ducks.

Last year, a group of cute brown ducks decided that the pond in front of the network’s headquarters building was a desirable location in which to relocate, and they promptly moved in.

Mama duck, who is either really accommodating or a common street whore, began popping out babies like there was a conveyor belt in her va-j-j. The babies began charming the employees – me included – with their fluffy little bodies and their adorable waddle.

And then, as these sweet little ducklings became full-fledged ducks, they became something else entirely.

Squatters.

A condo was built on the pond to shelter the family, but they decided that the entire lot was now their backyard, and they began waltzing back and forth between the film studio headquarters – where they would, as the mood struck them, either dine or bathe – and the TV network building. This necessitated that a (human) security guard be stationed in between to insure that no one runs over the darling little beasts.

Then they began s***ing everywhere. Uncontent to confine their defecation to fouling the waters of the pond, they decided to leave their gifts along the walkways leading to and from the building. (Perhaps this was some kind of veiled comment on our programming – everyone’s a critic.)

This week, they’ve taken their insouciance to a whole new level. Small gangs of them have begun planting themselves in front of the doors with a menacing look, like a group of alleyway thugs. This is obviously some kind of gang initiation, and one can only imagine what they plan to do once they get their little webbed feet on us. I’ve taken to leaving the building from the side exit.  

I generally LOVE animals. But why, I ask you, couldn’t they have stayed young, and adorable, and remembered their place?

 This must be what it’s like to have teenagers.

I found myself watching E News Weekend this morning while waiting for a plumber to install a new garbage disposal and toilet.

 Need I even say that the appliances in question were surprisingly relevant metaphors for the breathless coverage of a host of “superstars” making headlines on E News – stars like Kendra, Kimora, Kourtney & Khloe, and Jon Gosselin.

 We all like to watch people who are dumber than we are, people whose lives are a bigger mess than our own, for that exquisite moment of superiority that only a soundbite from Snooki can bring; but on some new show called “Jerseylicious”, this frosted-poof terror declared, “I like taking advantage of the weak – that’s fun for me.” 

 Exactly how bad do we have to feel about ourselves to set the bar this low?

 My new toilet is installed. Maybe I should try watching that instead. And at least there, if I feel the need to throw up, I’m good to go.

As I’m standing on the shuttle that takes you from the ticketing terminal at the Las Vegas airport to the gates the other day, I notice that the pretty twentysomething woman next to me – accompanied by a group of young female friends – is wearing a t-shirt that reads, “I LOVE TO FART” (the “Love” being a graphic heart, of course, which really classes up the message).

This set me to wondering exactly what kind of woman would wear a shirt that boldly expresses her preference for public disgorging of bodily gases.

This is obviously a woman who does not worry where her next relationship is coming from. She is either happily married to someone with highly damaged olfactory nerves or is a hippie chick earth mother type who doesn’t shave her armpits and thinks anti-perspirants are a Fascist plot to kill us. God knows, there’s nothing wrong with either of these – some of my best friends can’t smell or tolerate corporations – but I would counsel that, if she wonders why people are throwing themselves against the doors of the an airport shuttle and screaming to get out, she may want to glance down.