January 16, 2003

    eSLASHculture is proud to present another installment of Pearls From Swine, our award-winning  lifestyle column from noted author, bon vivant, and manly man about town Ambrose "Swine" Swineburn.

    Greetings, readers!  As I look down on Central Park from the lofty heights of my glass walled rooftop penthouse, I wonder why so many issues facing today's modern gentleman are so cloudy and uncertain rather than as clear and self-evident as the majestic skyline of Manhattan I see looming before me.  Fear not, readers.  I will, as always, shed light upon a few of the complex issues in the realm of what I refer to as "men's etiquette" as well as address some other important topics for today's well-groomed, well-heeled man.

    I recently received a telephone call from my second cousin Teddy who lives in Chicago.  He has fallen under the spell of a lovely young women in his social set named Morgan.  "Swine," he said.  "I've got to have her."  He has decided to woo her by taking her on what he hopes will be a stimulating and memorable first date, and he wanted my opinion regarding his plans.  To start with, he will take her out for dinner at a very stylish nouvelle cuisine restaurant called The Fenneled Game Hen.  Later  he planned on taking her to see the new award-winning women's film "The Hours" starring Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore in a story about sensitive, depressing writer Sylvia Plath.  He hopes the evening will convince her he is a discerning, sympathetic, and thoughtful fellow.  I said, "Teddy, why not just put on a dress and do her nails?"  I hear there is another new women's film out directed by Jody Foster that also stars Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore as well as Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashley Judd.  It is called "The Whining," and the characters are all bored, wealthy women of leisure who gather together for hours each day to whine and whine about how stupid and insensitive all their husbands, lovers, and paid escorts are.  I'm positive this kind of rubbish will bring home a mantle full of Oscars, but will it bring home the fair Morgan?  I think not.  I advised Teddy to take a different approach.  I recommended he take his paramour to a Southside joint called The Bloody Rack where they serve extra rare steaks carved off the bone in a slaughterhouse next door.  After dinner, why not take Morgan to the meat packing district where a friend of mine arranges unlicensed bare-knuckled prize fights in a small paddock filled with gamblers and lowlifes?  The smell of sweat, blood, and rancid leather will reach Morgan in places Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore could never even imagine.  After the fight, it is time for a trip to an off-the-beaten path brothel in Little China called Madame Choo Lei's.  While swilling down a couple of tumblers of absinthe, the sight of all those Asian fancy women strutting about in and out of their silk robes will kindle Morgan's fires of passion.  By midnight, Teddy will no doubt have her in a room upstairs showing her a little maneuver I picked up in Algiers called The Moroccan Leg Roll.  I know she will find that very stimulating indeed.  It should be a first date she will never forget.

    On another topic, a friend of mine named Maximillian who is a bond trader on Wall Street called me recently for advice.  He said, "Swine, you have to help me."  He had just developed the first symptoms of a cold, and he wanted to know if there was anything he could do to nip it in the bud.  Should he send his personal assistant out for fresh Echinacea? Should he try mega doses of Zinc and Vitamin C?  Should he consult his aromatherapist?  I told him to forget those ridiculous and ineffective remedies.  A very close friend of mine who happens to be an immensely talented and compassionate physician recently clued me in on the new cutting edge approach to cold prevention.  It is called the "Hostile Environment Theory," and it is remarkably simple and efficacious.  We know that once a cold virus enters your system it provokes mild initial symptoms such as a sore throat or a runny nose.  The new treatment's goal is to prevent virus growth by making its new host environment as hostile and damaging as possible.  The treatment is simple:  as soon as the first symptoms appear, start drinking heavily immediately.  Vodka, gin, single malt scotch ... it makes no difference.  By drinking heavily, the blood alcohol level can be raised up to over 0.3 deciliters or three times the level for legal intoxication.  This will promptly stop viral growth and replication.  The virus will soon find its new host environment too hostile to thrive in, and it will die off within forty-eight hours.  My friend Max thanked me for the advice and said he would start Hostile Environment Therapy immediately at his local bar.  Two weeks later, Max reported back to me that the treatment had worked beautifully.  He began drinking heavily, and three days later he woke up in a whorehouse in a small border town in Mexico just south of Tijuana.  His body was covered with garish tattoos, and he was allegedly now married to a toothless, sixty-three year old Mexican prostitute, but he was symptom free.  Chalk up another success for the Hostile Environment Theory!

    Recently as I was having a brace of cocktails at the Oak Bar with several colleagues, a fan of this column recognized me and politely introduced himself.  Roderick, as I will call him, explained that not only was he a great admirer of my writing, but he was also a very successful lawyer specializing  in the field of "intellectual properties."   Provocatively, he asked if I would be interested in suing HBO for plagiarism as he thought that clearly the long-running HBO hit series "Sex In The City" is blatantly based on the adventures of myself and my "Swine Pack" of close friends and determined bachelors whose adventures have been well documented in this column over the past eight years.  In truth, I have been asked about this many times, and the similarities are more than coincidental.  One pack  of wealthy, charming sexually voracious adventurers running roughshod over the Manhattan nightlife may seem much like another.  In the first few years,  the homage from the young, sexy "Sex In The City" girls seemed like the sincerest form of flattery.  However, though the Swine Pack remains triumphant, Carrie Bradshaw and her man-hungry harridans have grown maudlin and have begun to noticeably - there is no polite way to say this - sag.  It is a sad fact that though I continue to grow more ruggedly handsome and virile with time, Carrie Bradshaw with each passing year comes to more and more closely resemble one of those scary Haitian shrunken head voodoo dolls wearing a yellow fright wig.  To make a long story short, I commissioned my new friend Roderick to seek legal redress from HBO for plagiarism, and he was successful.  Though I declined a multi-million dollar settlement, I did agree to their compromise offer.  Now every week one of the stars of "Sex In The City" of my choosing - always the sexier, younger brunette one, I believe her name is Charlotte - comes around my penthouse apartment for a couple of hours every Tuesday and Thursday to straighten a few things up while wearing a skimpy little French maid costume.  The Swine Pack and I are always touched by her presence, and we frequently refer to her as "our little intellectual property."

Be sure to ask your local quality bookseller about the release of the new upcoming bestseller Swine Time: Ambrose Swineburn's Guide to Modern Dating and Related Litigation.