I should have posted this ages agom when the hilarious Jackie Kessler had it up on Cat and Muse, her great website (which you should really check out for her laugh-ou-loud funny alter-egos, Jezebel and Melpomene interviews with fictional characters of guest authors).

Ranya had her turn in the spotlight back in January, and since it’s a slow news days, here’s Ranya, star of Cutting Loose and reigning Princes Charming (if only in her own head).

Enjoy!

***

Princess Charming

JEZEBEL:
Heya, Avid Fans! Welcome back to Cat and Muse, the Internet talk-radio show run by and about fiction characters. I’m your host, the former demon Jezebel, coming at you live from the sordid depths of Jackie Kessler’s website. With me, as always, is the lovely, lamentable Muse of Tragedy…Melpomene!

[APPLAUSE]

Hi, Mel!

MELPOMENE:
YO.

JEZ:
Our next guest on Cat and Muse is a modern-day princess, and no, that’s not code for JAP. She was brought up behind the gilded walls of Saudi Arabian high society and winner of the Dream Husband sweepstakes . . . until said husband turns out to be more interested in Paolo, the interior-decorator-slash-underwear-model, than in his virginal new wife. Yikes!

MEL:
I KNOW WHAT BOYS LIKE…

JEZ:
Heh. Publishers Weekly calls CUTTING LOOSE “engrossing,” and Romantic Times says, “Dajani spins a tale of three women and their individual journeys to find happiness. Through strong writing and distinctive characters, readers are drawn into their lives, their loves, and their internal struggles. Dajani wraps it up nicely in the end, leaving us with a delectable tale that is hard to put down.”

Delectable? Yum! Boys and girls, say hello to one of the stars of Nadine Dajani’s CUTTING LOOSE…Ranya!

[APPLAUSE]

Heya, Ranya!

RANYA:
Hello, darlings.

JEZ:
So you’re this hot young woman with a rich dad, and…[GLANCES AT CUE CARDS] Is this right? You’re really 32 and still a virgin? Mel, is this a typo?

RANYA:
[SIGHS] I’m a virgin who’s been saving herself for Mr. Right for the past 32 – that’s right, 32 – years.

JEZ:
And then you meet the One…

RANYA:
And my Mr. Right turns out to be gay. That’s total [BLEEP]!!!

JEZ:
Oh, sweetie. I don’t know what to say.

RANYA:
I’ve always fit everywhere. I used to be the playground princess, and then the popular girl in high school—even if it was an all-girl high school in Riyadh, Saudi. Hey, I rubbed shoulders with real royalty, okay? And then I was this super eligible bachelorette. And then one day, poof! I find my husband at my favorite department store, making a grab for our decorator’s ass while he buys him that totally hot Hermes red croc passport holder.

JEZ:
That bastard.

RANYA:
I don’t know what was worse: that he was buying it for someone else when I’d begged and pleaded for it to no avail, or that the someone else was a dude!

JEZ:
The former. Definitely.

RANYA:
And just like that, I turn into a social pariah, in the circles I roll in at least—rich girls with too much time on their hands and access to other people’s money.

JEZ:
Ack. Surely, nothing can be worse than that. Right?

RANYA:
Besides the being cut off from any income from my parents thing? [TICS OFF POINTS ON FINGERS] I have no skills. Unless you count rolling vines leave into little rice-stuffed fingers of gastronomical goodness a “skill”…

JEZ:
Every little bit helps…

RANYA:
There’s also that total biatch of an editor I work for.

JEZ:
[READS CUE CARDS] That would be Rio.

MEL:
AND SHE DANCES ON THE SAND.

RANYA:
I swear, if Georges wouldn’t kill her for it, she’d have me cleaning toilets at the Suleltate offices.

JEZ:
The say what now?

RANYA:
[SIGHS] I know, I know, I can barely pronounce the name of this magazine I work for, either. It’s supposed to mean “Cut Loose” or “Let Loose” or something like that in Spanish. Also another brilliant idea of Rio’s.

JEZ:
Gotcha. Workplace issues. I can relate.

RANYA:
And let’s not forget the other bane of my existence, my roommate Zahra, who Georges totally guilt-tripped into taking me in. Isn’t he a sweetie?

JEZ:
I like him already!

RANYA:
I think all the fat from those Krispy Kreme doughnuts is cutting off circulation to Zahra’s niceness glands… I have no freaking clue what her problem is, but that girl has it in for me.

JEZ:
With all this badness, there has to be some good, right?

RANYA:
[GRINS] Zahra’s condo rocks! It’s on this fabulous street overlooking Biscayne Bay, and hey, I’ve never had a single moment in my entire life where I didn’t have to answer to my parents or act like a lady of my social standing (or else face the gossiping hoards) or whatever. No one in Miami knows me, and even if I’m a total charity case that Georges took pity on when he found me dazed and confused on the executive floor of the London hotel I was hiding in (that would have been before my credits cards were frozen…), I’m earning some money now, which, I won’t lie to you, doesn’t beat a Chanel sample sale—but it is nice.

JEZ:
Congratulations on your anonymity. You mentioned frozen credit cards, poor thing. Have you adjusted OK?

RANYA:
[SHURGS] I had to really change up my wardrobe since moving to Miami. My standard black or otherwise chic, trendy-yet-sophisticated outfits that killed in Montreal would look totally wrong in Miami.

JEZ:
Yeah. No way would you blend.

RANYA:
[GIGGLES] But I’m poor now, so I’ve had to make some, um, tradeoffs.

JEZ:‘Spain, please.

RANYA:
Let’s just say H&M and Zara have come in handy. But you will never catch me in those second-skin white denim capris, yellow halter tops, wedge heels and curtain-rod-ring earrings these women wear. Ugh!

JEZ:
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…[COUGHS] So, you mentioned Georges…

RANYA:
[NODS] The big boss. Who, I suspect, has a crush on me. But I’m too pure-of-mind to actually notice.

JEZ:
Un huh.

RANYA:
Not to mention it would be totally inconvenient to fall for Georges, seeing as I am MARRIED…

JEZ:
To a gay dude. I think you should do Georges.

RANYA:
Really, have you no shame?

JEZ:
None. So, you and Georges. Who’s on top? Or are there other preferred positions?

RANYA:
I’m a prude sweetie—I don’t kiss and tell. Actually… I don’t kiss, period.

JEZ:
Come on, pretend. What’s your romantic fantasy? Don’t worry. It’s just us girls. You can be as graphic as you want. [GRINS] In fact, I insist.

RANYA:
Really?

JEZ:
Really really.

RANYA:
Wow… I’ve never thought about that before…. Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I’ve fantasized about every position, place, possibility I can imagine! I AM SO HORNY! I NEED TO HAVE SEX ALREADY!!!!

JEZ:
[BURSTS OUT LAUGHING]

RANYA:
On the hood of Georges’ Beemer, in his office, I’ll have sex with him in his mom’s living room if it means I WILL FINALLY GET [BLEEP] LAID!!!!!

JEZ:
I almost feel bad asking this. Which is better: sex or chocolate?

RANYA:
Umm… ahhh… let me get back to you on that.

JEZ:
Hee! So, in CUTTING LOOSE, were there any parts of the story where you were like, Nad, sweetie, what the Hell are you making me do? Or were you and your Creator in sync the entire time?

RANYA:
[GLARES AT COMPUTER SCREEN] She made me into a freaking SEX COLUMNIST!

JEZ:
Oh wow.

MEL:
DON’T BE CRUEL.

RANYA:
Can you believe it? Me – Ranya – the VIRGIN! Nuts, I tell you.

JEZ:
Some Creators are such total bitches. [GLARES AT COMPUTER SCREEN] Hear that, Kessler?

RANYA:
Oh, Nadine made it sound like it was Rio’s desperate bid to inject newness to the magazine, but I was onto her… Nad had it in for me too, just like the other two, Rio and Zahra.

JEZ:
If you had your way, what would you change about CUTTING LOOSE?

RANYA:
[GRINS] I’d get a piece of that luscious Diego too.

JEZ:
Ooh. Details!

RANYA:
No, I’m kidding. Rio can have him. Georges is a total catch. But couldn’t I have gotten a better job at the magazine? Also, why the hell do Rio and Zahra get to all the sex in the book and I get NOTHING? Isn’t 32 years of waiting enough? Jeez.

JEZ:
Aww. If you could make Nadine do anything, what would it be?

RANYA:
I’d get her to write another book about me. Actually, scratch that—she’s welcome to write about the other two while Georges and I get a chance to, um, take care of some unfinished business…

JEZ:
That’s what I’m talking about! Tell me one thing in the real world that you wish you could change.

RANYA:
Sigh. Okay – I’ll admit, I spent a big chunk of my life being really self-centered, not to mention, fairly delusional. But getting to know Rio and Zahra really opened my eyes. I got this big expensive education, while Rio had to fight tooth and nail to go to college—apparently, her family thinks education is wasted on women! Can you believe that?

JEZ:
Unfortunately, I can.

RANYA:
And Zahra… poor thing, no wonder she’s so bitter. Her whole family is trapped in the West Bank, under military curfew, and they’d pretty much starve if she didn’t work her butt off to help. Is it too much to ask for politicians who don’t play Russian roulette with ordinary people’s lives, and access to education for all? How else are you going to get anywhere in this complicated world? [BLINKS] Wow—did I really just say of that?

JEZ:
You did great! If CUTTING LOOSE goes Hollywood, who should play you in the movie?

RANYA:
Nadine thinks Aishwarya Rai—you know, that hot Indian chick from Bride and Prejudice—should play me. But I think I’m partial to Penelope Cruz.

JEZ:
Nice. What about Georges?

RANYA:
Who better to play opposite Penelope than the celeb I’m totally crushing on right now, Javier Bardem?

JEZ:
Perfect! Finally, if you could be evil for one day, and you were granted spiffy evil powers, what would the powers be and how would you use them?

RANYA:
I would turn my ex-husband’s penis into a button mushroom.

JEZ:
HAH! Perfect yet again!

Avid Fans, give another round of applause for one of the stars of Nadine Dajani’s CUTTING LOOSE…Ranya!

I’m loving how Anna Wintour of Vogue and Devil-Wears-Prada fame has turned the once flush-with-cash Emirate into a handy, one word adjective describing unbridled, unabashed, unnecessary and utterly conspicuous consumption.

And just in time for the Oscars too. As you’re Twittering your personal take on red carpet style to your friends this Sunday, you’ll be grateful for Ms. Wintour’s updating of common English vernacular.

What might have once been: “Is Nicole Kidman really wearing gold lamé with emerald-encrusted bronze platforms and a two-foot-tall peacock-feathered headdress???” can now be easily pared down to: “Nic Kidman - DUBAI!!!!”

Of course, you could also twitter the following if you’ve been reading Ms. Wintour’s publication with semblance of regularity over the past few decades: “Vogue - DUBAI!!!”

Asked how she is tweaking the high-society-navel-gazing rag in deference to the corner-cutting mood of its common (and cash cow) readership, Ms. Wintour offered her refusal to shoot a nipple-grazing sequined “thing” (retail price - wait for it - $25,000) as an example of a more pared down, somber mood prevailing at the offices of Vogue.

And we wonder why John Thain thought he could get away with laying off thousands of Merrill Lynch employees and asking for a ten million dollar bonus in the same breath?

Say what? The laid-off employees ought to be kissing the soles of Thain’s Ferragamos for his heroic rescue of the financial institution? For what would the common masses do without their financial institutions? Without Vogue’s enlightening pieces on how H&M pants are for suckers while Oscar de la Renta is for-evah, daarling? The common masses need Thain and Vogue, just like the seventeenth-century French masses needed Marie-Antoinette. The masses ought to be grateful that someone out there can still wear what Anna calls “aspirational” clothing, even if that someone is English-heiress-turned-Vogue-reporter-turned-author-of-the-barfworthy-Bergdof-Blondes, Plum Sykes.

Now that we’re all in agreement that Dubai had all the long-term investment appeal of a pair of drop-crotch MC Hammer pants, can we give Montreal its Formula 1 spot back?

Obama as a mu-mu.

Do we love it or do we hate it?

Pick up a pen and notebook.

Seriously. And if you’re fortunate enough to live somewhere where you can go somewhere peaceful outdoors, then go out there. Leave the laptop at home.

There is something ominous about watching that laptop sputter and bleep to life, signaling it’s time to do some Serious Work. Blank pages of paper on the other hand, are wonderfully non-committal. Even to a linear writer like myself. My thoughts can be just as jumbled as the next fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants scribe, but I am absolutely incapable of writing out of order.

But for some reason, that mental block doesn’t seem to apply to thoughts on paper. Sometimes I write in bullet point form, sometimes in proper sentences . Sometimes I doodle, and sometimes I come up with great zingers. And it’s so wonderfully freeing not to have to think of a computer file name that’s both easy to remember and successfully sums up all the randomness that’s poured out of me. If I need to find something, I just flip through the notebook (and usually discover all kinds of great stuff I’d forgotten all about)

Best of all, when I write on paper I feel like a real writer and not like a college kid working on a term essay.

Try it, you might be very pleasantly surprised.

It’s refreshing to see intelligent business strategies vindicated by positive results.H&M, the Swedish Wunderstore, has annouced new store openings all over the globe, higher than projected earnings, and - believe it or not - more hiring! It seems that by helping people be fashionable without breaking the bank, they’ve managed to keep themselves afloat in a sea of doom and gloom.

Of course, the strategy needs to be backed up by an intelligent management and operations team, otherwise why would Target - arguably a competitor to H&M - be tanking while Walmart profits soar?

In a previous post I blogged about the state of the luxury business, and how it sought to expand into “non-traditional markets” (i.e. sell luxury items to people who have no business buying luxury items in the first place) and even declared itself resistant to economic downturns since rich people are presumably above such mundane, pedestrian things as worrying about where their next dividend payout will come from.

As Louis Vuitton, Dior, et al. have learned the hard way, it doesn’t do to base a long-term strategy on shaky assumptions, such as, everyone will want to emulate celebrities’ free-spending ways until the end of time, so let’s invest a whole lot of money, energy, and a big chunk of our “brand” that we’ve spent decades honing into this strategy.

It might have been okay if they had gone for the easy profits of mass-luxury in a lucid manner: knowing they could only ride the wave for so long, and figuring out an exit strategy for when things turned sour. It might have also helped if they hadn’t eaten into their brand image by moving jobs to China so they could fatten up their margins (without, mind you, passing the savings onto the customer).

It’s funny how everything in life follows the same old cycle. Things move forward, but in widening circles as opposed to an upwards-moving line.

Take jeans.

Go ahead and google Brooke Shields and Calvin Klein to see what “normal” jeans looked like 20 years ago.

Here’s a picture in case you’re lazy:

All together now, what do we call these jeans, nowadays?

That’s right - Mom jeans!

We all remember how Britney Spears took an extreme runway trend (by Alexander McQueen) and brought it into the mainstream:

Luckily, that fad has died a merciful death, but our view of how high “normal” jeans should rise has been changed forever.

Luxury will not die. People will get sick of cheap, ill-fitting H&M clothes. I am addicted to designer jeans and will continue to buy them so long as I can afford to. But luxury will be humbled, and it’s about time.

I knew there had to be a reason I love this movie so much. I was so psyched it was on TV last night but bummed that I didn’t have much time to spare - I’m on deadline for book #3 (have yet to commit to a title).

Feeling the February blues? Think life is one big hamster wheel and you’re the hamster? Watch Groundhog Day. (Actually, I’m going to be in Montreal at the end of the month and I think it’s high time I bought the dvd). It seems that even the bleakest of seasons in the bleakest of small towns and the most annoying of company can offer occasion for inner peace and maybe even peace. It just depends on your outlook, and your actions.

Here’s a deeper look into Groundhog Day’s themes, nuggets of wisdom, and relationship to Buddhism. Who knew a movie about a rodent could be so deep?

I’ve been meaning to do this forever, so here goes, the first installment of mini-travel essays about Cuba, through photos. I have taken literally hundreds upon hundreds of pictures in Cuba - mostly of monuments and winding, ancient streets - which makes it very hard to pick just a handful to feature here.  I’m going to go with the ones that mean something special to me, are offbeat, or show a different side of Cuba you don’t often see.

Here’s one of my favorites. It was taken very early one morning - just a little bit after dawn - at a small local beach twenty minutes by bus from the hotel.

Education is completely free in Cuba, and the tiny empoverished country has one of the highest literacy rates in the Western hemisphere, beating most Latin American nations (and quite possibly the US too). All the kids are given the uniform seen here - white shirt, red shorts/skirt, blue kerchief - the colours of the Cuban flag. High school kids wear yellow shorts/skirts instead of the red of elementary school. I love this picture because so few people are privy to a moment like this. I was extraordinarily lucky to be in Baracoa - the town depicted here - perched on the Easternmost tip of the archipelago in the first place.

This was one of the first places visited by Columbus upon his “discovery” of the West Indies, and the first place to be colonized by the Spaniards in Cuba. It’s cut off from the rest of the country by a chain of mountains - the famed Sierra Maestra that later sheltered Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries. (Castro’s success owes much to the poor, cut-off Eastern half of Cuba, popularly called the “Oriente”).

Baracoa was so cut-off that colonialists eventually moved westwards, and without proper roads (trust me on this - I got to experience the quality of the roads first hand), Baracoa was sealed off entirely from the rest of Cuba until after the Revolution, when Fidel had the scenic “Farola” highway built. Apparently the views from the Farola are breathtaking, but I couldn’t tell you because I travelled through the old bumpy, pot-holed, winding road where my big, awkward tour bus had to compete with bicycles and mule-drawn buggies for space (we would zip along at a normal pace for a glorious five minutes only to come to a screeching halt behind a mule).

Though Baracoa is one of the many enclaves in Cuba that benefited immensely from the revolution, when you see it you can’t help but imagine that people here are still living their lives very much in the same way they always have, revolution or no revolution.  Skinny, shirtless boys riding dilapidated bikes (with a second passenger perched between the handlebars) are everywhere. So are the meandering sows with litters of piglets trailing around them, chickens, and goats. Banana trees grow wild, lush vegetation is everywhere and civilization as we know it is hard to spot. But it’s there… those thatched open huts dotting the sides of the road are actually bus shelters constructed from organic, endemic material, in perfect harmony with both nature and the history of the region. The boys may be riding their bikes shirtless, but the schools are there, and open to all, and even the tiniest tot in the farthest corner of Cuba gets to go to school in a clean, neat uniform, even if they have to take the beach route to get there.

The first time I read Ben Stein’s latest article in the NYT, I was fuming. I even felt - in spite of myself - a twinge of understanding for Sarah Palin’s attempt to sever “real Americans” from their less-real compatriots (knowing full well the extent of her hypocrisy, of course, but still).

There it was, the “sweet woman” at her wits’ end because her ex-husband’s dwindling income put her $20,000/month alimony check in jeopardy, her now “worthless” 2.7 million dollar home, and the fact that she was considering sending her credit-card-bill-footing boyfriend packing.

Oh, and she hasn’t been employed in decades (it’s a day job in itself, to spend $20,000 a month, isn’t it?) and she doesn’t have a penny in savings. And now of course, she was worried about her future.

I had to wonder what planet this woman had been living on all these years.

I reread the piece a couple of days later, just to make sure it hadn’t been a satirical jab at the lifestyles of the once rich and wannabe famous (like this one).

Instead of indignant fury, the second reading left me feeling sorry for this “sweet woman” who may or may not be sweet, but is certainly a victim of sorts.

But whose victim? Her good-for-nothing ex-husband? Consumerism? Alan Greenspan’s monetary policies that resulted in the biggest bubble in American history and the ensuing housing market hemorrhage? Disney’s princess propaganda?

It was that last one that struck a chord. In college, I took a humanities class about gender issues and politics. Our (male) teacher exemplified everything on a republican die-hard’s hate list: wimpy and androgynous looking, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, passionate (in a very nice, non-confrontational way) about gender politics, especially the trap so many of today’s middle-aged women find themselves in.

Once upon a time, these were fresh, wide-eyed women with a secret (or perhaps, not-so-secretive) hankering for some of those values we now call traditional. In other words, while they would never call themselves meek or submissive, they harbored fantasies of being looked after by a strong man. They were well-rounded, well-educated, and sometimes even had careers. Career’s that they would sacrifice - some more willingly than others - once their husbands’ and children’s needs, and their homemaker fanatsies outweighed their own independence. And when the husbands left, their worlds crumbled around them.

There isn’t anything wrong with wanting to be taken care of - I harbour fantasies of someone (preferably a hot, male someone who cooks and cleans) looking after me - that’s just how many of us are wired (and if you don’t think men are wired that way too, look closer at how they love to be “mommied” or how so many of them take off when they can’t handle the heat of being the strong one anymore).

The difference between this woman and me is that while we both have similar fantasies, I settle for watching Michael Douglas hack a way through the Colombian jungle for Kathleen Turner while polishing off a glass (or three) of pink wine. The next day, I dust myself off and go to work. I grumble and complain, and sometimes wonder why I hadn’t stayed in the material comfort of a marriage that offered security and companionship, instead of heading out alone into the fog of an unknown future.

Post-feminism is a kind of backlash against the hardcore feminism of the 60s. What’s wrong with being a girly girl? Not only is it fun, but let’s face it, it’s a better deal. Who the heck wants to toil away at a day job for a pittance, only to have to come home to chores (that men still aren’t doing, feminism be damned).

But lest these women forget, being a girly girl in the extreme is not without its price, and rather than tear a page form “sweet woman”’s playbook, they’d fare better by holding her case up as a cautionary tale of pre and post-feminism gone awry.