It made my day, big time. There it was, buried in the second paragraph of a story in The Salt Lake Tribune about Jon Huntsman Sr.’s 20,000-square-foot Deer Valley hideaway being put on the market for $55 million.
The headline and first paragraph alone
were enough to get me fulminating about
conspicuous consumption, unconscionable
extravagance and wretched excess. But,
before I could get too worked up, there was
an almost throwaway reference that made me
want to stand up and cheer. It was a moment
all-too-rare in the daily slog of this thing we
call life, where surprises have ceased to surprise
and eruptions of bliss fizzle like a dud
sparkler at a 24th of July picnic.
In a mere millisecond, my eyeballs registered the printed letters, the letters resolved themselves into words, the words slotted themselves into a sentence, and that sentence flashed along the synapses of the cerebral cortex to produce a feeling that can only be described as unalloyed joy. Please join me—I’ve re-read the words innumerable times and repetition has not deflated my joy—in experiencing for yourselves a delicious burst of ecstasy:
“The listing agent, Deedee Corradini,
said it had been on the market for approximately
two months.”
Deedee Corradini! Listing agent! My God, that girl’s got game.
I cannot even begin to parse the pleasure
that surged through every system
in my earthly body upon reading, “The
listing agent, Deedee Corradini.” The
reverse order, “Deedee Corradini, the listing
agent,” would have been delicious,
but not quite as piquant. You need Deedee
just tossed into the sentence, almost as an
after-thought, like a pinch of salt.
What do they say? We murder to dissect. And the last thing I want to do is deep-six the living joy occasioned by listing agent, Deedee Corradini. Rather than dissect, therefore, I prefer to celebrate that joy by keeping the tasty morsel in my mouth and savoring the cascade of flavors that combined to create this delicious dish.
Over the past several years, I have not
infrequently been stopped in my tracks
by the question, “Whatever happened to
Deedee?” As you know, there is a long and
honored tradition of contemplating the
fate of the famous and infamous alike. “Ubi
sunt?” Where are they now?
A large number of those who have achieved some measure of celebrity skulk off the public stage and sink like stones. When the ripples subside, they are heard from no more, drowned in the heavy sea of oblivion. One thinks of such former local luminaries as Tom Welch, the late Frank Joklik, and erstwhile Mayor Ross “Sparky” Anderson. But Deedee was one of those figures who so captured the public imagination that it was impossible to shake her from our collective consciousness, sort of like a pesky burr that sticks to your hiking socks.
When, for example,
Sparky Anderson’s name surfaced
in connection with the Kiss of the
Gay Guys on the Plaza Formerly Known as
Main Street, it took me several seconds to
re-ignite Sparky from the damp mists of
time. The spark had long since died. But,
when Deedee emerged from the memory
hole, it wasn’t merely with a warm glow
of recognition, it was with a hot, gem-like
flame of revelation.
You knew that the Lady in Red would
return to us someday soon; the question
was, in what guise? As an aspirant for
public office, perhaps governor, or even
senator? As Mit Romney’s running mate
in 2012, with Mit (he
downsized his name
last year) out-
McCaining McCain
by picking a female,
and a Democrat
female, at that?
(Sarah Palin, I knew
Deedee Corradini, she
was a friend of mine,
and Ms. Palin, you are
no Deedee Corradini.)
No, we should have known
that she would delight and
dazzle us in a totally unexpected,
yet absolutely fitting,
fashion.
Listing agent, Deedee
Corradini!
Let it be known that entering
the field of real estate is not
an example of How the Mighty
Have Fallen. No way! Deedee is
n o t selling a fixer-upper in Holladay,
or hosting an open house for a bungalow
in Sugar House. The former mayor
of Hicksville is stepping up in the world,
reinventing herself as a beautiful person
in the hippest place west of Wendover—
namely, Park City, joining others who have
lifted themselves up by their bootstraps by
becoming realtors, like half the population
of Park City, the most famous all being former
porn superstar Harry Reems.
Deedee, welcome back!