Bon Bon Cra Cra

 

Shortly after returning to the Orlando area from my Koyo escapades in the Big Easy, I spent some hard earned Convergys coin to gussy-up my small bedroom in Ric's newly-purchased condo. One of the decorative items I bought (amongst two others similar to it) was this decoupage print on wood panel Art Deco advertising poster. I immediately made the symbolic connection that it depicted what I'd hope my life would return to...a flapper girl's non-stop shopping spree. At eight bucks an hour, I was gonna deal with every Karen before we knew what to call them, as they verbally abused me for hours on end over their newfangled and expensive addiction to their soon-to-be-commonplace cellphone lifestyle, and fund my way back to the middle class.

But Ol' Georgie, well, he had other plans for me and before a year was out, I was staring into that goofy-grinning gander watching with bitter baited breath for her to sloppy slapstick spill her overbearing load of precipitously poised packages and fall right on her Charleston Chew cheeks. But she never did. How could she? She's just an illustration after all. I was flesh and blood. I was the one to take the falls.

Now, to the present, she still hangs on my wall. It's the fifth wall she's been on over the years, but her goofy expression remains the same...blissfully unaware of any possible peril that could ever befall a gaily-festooned young thang on her way from the shops. 

Despite the copy being clearly visible all this time, I finally today decided to translate the French and it says: Candy crazy. Jacquin is assumedly the chocolatier. The address? Contemporaneously to the poster, I'm sure the shop was in an "ooh la la" fashionable area but Street View today shows that while there are still high-end stores nearby, this locale's on a rather sketchy litter-strewn gutter, heavily graffiti tagged side alley, perhaps a metaphor for what Europe itself has devolved to in our modern times. Or perhaps a metaphor for what my life has devolved to?

Just candy crazy though? And what, mayhaps, would one quantify as "candy?" Or "crazy" for that matter? More than a couple of those red twined teetering totes look like beautifully boxed bottles of booze, not bonbons. Whisky Wild? Bordeaux Bonkers? Liqueur Loco? Cognac Crazy? How many alliterations can I cram into one post? No matter, it all spells out the same no matter how you phrase it...like me, la Mademoiselle's an alchy!

I toast you, m'lady! All good things MUST come to an END! But until then, laissez les bon temps rouler!