"Girl, Martha Stewart is FAAAAAAT..."

On Saturday I went to go see Martha Stewart light the big-ass tree in the middle of the Macy's downtown that she had her company design ornaments for (last year it was Vera Wang, I heard). When I came in like three Macy's employees were directing people very perfunctorily, and I was like, "Excuse me, could you tell me which way it is to this Martha Stewart bullshit?", which they *loved*, and happily directed me in the way I needed to go.

As it turns out, though, the tree wasn't in the middle of the store, but up on the 7th floor in the middle of the store restaurant where the ceiling is cut out of the 8th and 9th floors so you have this really really tall ceiling over the restaurant. The 7th floor was packed with a bunch of older women well-dressed in knock-off brands, and so I was forced upwards to the 8th floor, the furniture section, where all the couches and chairs and hutches and stuff were still in place around the walled edge of the overlook onto the gigantic tree, and people were four and five deep sitting or standing in between the furniture as it allowed.

Interestingly, the hired choir off to one side on the 8th floor was African and they did carols and African-sounding things to the accompaniment of bongo drums and hand-claps -- there were otherwise no black people there, so maybe Martha decided she wanted an African-themed Christmas this year and had them ordered in? All the people down in the restaurant were white, too, so it was almost like a Christmas minstrel show, I thought.

Anyhow, when I finally worked my way into the crowd, it was really hot, and I felt bad for all the older women in back of me who couldn't see because pretty much the crowd was all older women who were shorter than me. The worst part of its being hot was that Martha was like a half hour late, and so me and this other woman who wasn't dressed up at all and had a loud laugh were wondering whether she would come down the main hall of the restaurant, or pop out of one of the gigantic presents that were stacked around the tree.

While we were laughing about this, someone reached over and was like called out my name, and it turned out to be a neighbor from down the road in my hometown. She had come to the city with her sister, I think, to shop, and when they came to Macy's, they found out the Martha thing was going on and came up to see. They then pointed out this fat woman in white at the edge of the Christmas tree room who was smiling and looked vaguely like Martha Stewart, except her white suit just draped off her tips and would have been a muu-muu if it reached the floor, it was that blousy.

"Is that Martha?", I was like, and when they nodded, I noted that she had put on the weight, and was like, "Well, shit on me, they should throw her on a silver platter and have some Chippendale's guys take her up to the podium! She looks like a fat old turkey from here."

I don't think my neighbor from home though it was that funny since after that they edged away and didn't talk to me again except for politely saying goodbye before they headed out, though after when Martha lit the tree I retold it to the woman I liked with the loud laugh and she laughed her loud laugh for that. At that point this odd old guy with a brown beard standing next to us turned to me and was like, "I'm surprised she's not in an orange suit," and when I asked about that, he was like, "She was in jail" and walked off, and as soon as he did that the woman I liked turned to me and said that that guy was weird and she had had to yell at him because he was talking out loud and saying Martha Stewart was the same as O.J. Simpson, and she had to tell him that it wasn't at all the same, Martha didn't kill anyone.

Me and the woman I liked talked more, and it turns out her grandfather, her father, and her husband all have worked at this local steel mill where the rats are as big as cats. Then, I left. Out on the street I called my mother and she said they've been airbrushing the shit out of Martha Stewart for years and that she suspects they use a body double for the magazine since she now looks like she's thirty, better than even a few years ago.