2005-03-09
"Zay look like zee large teeties, n'est ce pas?"
Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one fun little town.
Gorgeous backdrop + generous helping of Hot Young Guys in Snow Gear + really fun bars with saddles as bar stools = FUN FUN FUN!
I'm moving there.
This just in: "Right on" is once again an acceptable term of coolness, best used with the extended thumb/baby finger hand pose.
"Right on" said with a surfer accent is the pinnacle of coolatude.
I learned this from Tucker, a pro snowmobile racer who decided that I was One Hot Chick -- "you know, for a 45 year old (right on!)". Seriously -- what is it about me that attracts 23 year old surfer types who say "right on" and end the evening being pulled reluctantly home by one of their buddies, leaving me with the romantic phrase "uhm... I should probably go home, right? RIGHT? Should I?" Yes, Tuck. I'm married. Remember? We discussed this. At length. And it's the ONLY reason you find me attractive, so run along now. Okay, but, yeah. It was flattering. And actually he was a fairly intelligent, amusing kid, and was good beer company for a couple of hours. I believe I gave him a motherly lecture on not being able to race snowmobiles as a career, the wisdom of which he found so profound I thought he would cry.
Right on.
The town is nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges, and is home of the largest Elk reserve in the world. I saw two female moose chewing their cud next to the highway, several bazillion elk, small black dots that were promised to me to be bison, and teeny tiny miniature mountain goats on the tippy top of one of the Teton mountains. It was a very naturesque weekend, when I wasn't busy nursing a hangover and watching WB TV in my hotel room. (The pinnacle of my hangover -- when I thought that I had truly pickled my brain for once and all -- was finding a very scary episode of "Nip Tuck" with Christian as a sorcerer and lots of weird magic going on but no surgery. Then I figured out it was that stupid show "Charmed", and I recalled the ambulance. What IS this show -- does anyone know?!)
Speaking of the Tetons, a short history lesson for y'all:
Jackson Hole was discovered by french settlers back in 16mumblesomething. They were responsible for naming the "Tetons" and I'm thinking it went something like this:
Picture Pierre and Jean-Claude, trudging through the snowy tundra for 45 days, sans female company other than their sheep (a-hem), arriving upon a majestic mountain range.
Pierre: "Jean-Claude! Regarde! Zay look like zee large teeties, n'est ce pas?"
JC: "Mais oui, Pierre! I seenk ve muhst cahl zem zee "Grande Tetons" !!"
Both: "HOR HOR HOR HOR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR" (JC and Pierre collapse into giggling, quivering heaps of 12-year-old testosterone in the snow.)
Et voila: the Grandes Tetons were born.
Really, though, if the 17th century slang for "boobies" was "Tetons", and we want to stay current, we should probably rename them to be "The Bloblos", or "The Doudonnes" or "The Roberts", which, according to my recent google for french slang, is what Les Kids are calling Les Boobies today in la France.
The best part was overhearing a father, reading the placard describing how the Tetons were named, aloud to his 4 year old, quickly trail off into mumbledom as the true meaning of what he was reading became clear to him. The 12-year-old testosterone giggles over things like boobies begins with 4-year-olds, as any good father knows.
"KEEP READING DADDEEEEE!"
"Well, son. Well, I guess it says here the Tetons were named after their favorite drink, 'tea'".
"French people drink coffee, Daddy."
"Look! An Elk!"
Yes, all kinds of lovely t-shirts there proclaiming things like "Nice Tetons!", etc. It is a very boobacentric town, that Jackson Hole. Also, I continue to find "hole" just funny as hell, because I, too, am at heart a 12 year old. Sans le testosterone, of course.
Maybe that's why Tucker liked me. I have tremendous Tetons.
Right on.
xquzme at sometime today