Monday, July 30, 2007

100% Real Juice: Countess Zsa Zsa

Note: Apologies to anyone who may have read a truncated version of this last week. I was working on it and hit the Publish key by accident, instead of Draft. This one's the real thing.

One of the channels courtesy of my awesome cable package is Deja View, which shows nothing but the Hollywood goodness of yesterday. If you want to see Brenda and Dylan lock lips again, Bo & Luke Duke getting into trouble, or Ricky bellowing, "Luuuuuuuucy!", Deja View is the place to go.

I was flipping channels randomly last week, when a very blonde hair toss by Lisa Whelchel caught my eye. If that's not familiar, think 80's kitsch and you just might arrive at The Facts of Life.

I grew up on this show. Decades before troubled youth were having emotional breakdowns in Orange County, I was getting my weekly goodness from private school girls Jo, Blair, Natalie, Tootie and their den mother, Mrs. Garrett. It was a happy go lucky show, now cheesy at the best of times, but my memories of it are fond nonetheless.

The episode on last week was one I'd had faint memories of, so I stuck around to watch the rest. Blair becomes a salesgirl for Countess Calvet Cosmetics (a fictionalized Mary Kay, if you will), and is later on visited by the Countess herself, in a guest appearance by the fabulous Zsa Zsa Gabor.

The Countess is talking to the girls about natural beauty & vegetables, telling them how important it is to get your greens. Tootie makes some sort of grip about Zucchini, and the Countess replies with:

"Vegetables make you glow. You eat junk, you look like junk. Right, dahlink?"

So true, so true. A nice little play of You are what you Eat, spoken by none other than the mentor of drag queens everywhere. If you eat junk you look like junk. Or, have you ever seen someone who ate greasy foods all day look great? You don't even have to be eating anything for it to show, better put by, have you ever seen an addictive smoker look terrific?

Our bodies are a canvas, manipulated by what we do to them and put in them. And if we put the best things in them, they become works of art. Right, dahlink?

7 comments:

Mrs. Loquacious said...

Boo. I went camping this weekend and ate bacon, sausage, cheese-filled smokies, and drank a lot of Chai liqueur. What is on my canvas? :( A pig?

Airam said...

I remember that show! I loved Tutti .. I think because of her name though.

AndreAnna said...

I should be a bottle of wine with a cheese head. :)

I also loved that show - and Different Strokes. TV just isn't the same anymore. :)

Anonymous said...

This is the second post I've read this week that's mentioned the Facts of life, so I think it's only appropriate that I finally come clean about my childhood nickname- Tootie. The facts of life was one of my parents favorite shows and they loved her best, so I got the nickname. Nevermind that I couldn't have looked more different from the character, being a small, white little girl instead of a hip, black teenager. But whatever. It's still stuck.

B said...

"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art."

I was looking for quotes the other day for my blog thought this fit your post

and I loved the facts of life!

The Big Cheese said...

"...the facts of life are all about youououuu."

With Love, Fat Girl said...

Mrs. L, that makes you a camper. Unless you're the sort to know foliage well enough to survive on thistle and berries during such a time, in which case it would make you weird.

Andreanna, I too am a cheesehead, and not for the football team either. Sigh...

Airam, I think every female in our generation loved that show, and will be appalled at how bad it is these days! Not up to standards at all.

Brandy, you were a tootie?? You got a nickname that rhymes with your own name?

B, awesome quote, thanks :)

Cheese... oh, cheese...