SHOPPING ALERT

Perlis has a new Tulane belt.

Last year, Mr. Hullabaloo finally made it to a Coach's radio show with me when they were still having them at Bruno's.

For those of you old-school Tulanians: Bruno's has new digs. Completely. When I went into the ladies room I had to do a double take. Just like I did my first time at Monkey Hill (PILLOW MINTS and a CHAISE. at AT-2's. Perhaps more on that on another occasion).

They have all kinds of room in the new Brunos and a full kitchen menu. Their Firecracker Salad is lick your plate delicious. Fried chicken, pepper jelly vinaigrette, jalapenos. yum.

So I digress. At that particular show, Coach T was wearing this beautiful ivory v-neck golf sweater with the crested T logo on the right. Mr. Hullabaloo could not take his eyes off the sweater and kept talking about how sharp it looked. excellent. mental note for the christmas list.

Mr. and Mrs. Hullabaloo do not miss an away football game unless we are physically restrained for some reason beyond our control. So we found ourselves at the end of that season thoroughly enjoying the lovely pre-game tailgating barbeque sponsored by the Houston Alumni Association for the game against Rice. Alan really outdid himself.

Mr. and Mrs. Hullabaloo chatted with the loveliest alumni couple when we noticed Mr. Lovely Alumni was wearing a Tulane belt that Mr. Hullabaloo SIMPLY HAD TO HAVE. We had to restrain ourselves from forcibly taking the belt.

It's from Perlis said Mr. Lovely Alumni. His exact words were "oh you'll definitely be paying for a belt." Even though Mr. Hullabaloo kept eyeing the belt in a suspect manner, I assured him he would only have to wait until the holidays. and I had to quickly whisk him off to the enclosed beer garden at Rice Stadium where all the other sinners from New Orleans were.

This belt is just gorgeous. I could picture Mr. Hullabaloo making an absolute splash at the next Tulane Golf Classic in his seersucker shorts and this belt. He'd get a bunch of holes in one, just from the prowress of this belt.

You see: Mr. Hullabaloo's appearance is of utmost importance. Only the finest Tulane outfits will do. Because Mr. Hullabaloo is a media whore darling. Yes, that's right. My fellow Hullabaloo-ette Peggy can testify. At the Alabama game, post-Ike or Gustav (it was a male-named storm, the female storms are the ones you need to worry about), the local Alabama media was just swarming to get a "hurricane-victim-soldiers-on-despite-hurricane-in-order-to-tailgate" news story. We were all interviewed by all sorts of nice people. Notice I said "we were all interviewed." Guess who was the only one to make the cut in air time: Mr. Hullabaloo.

Mr. Hullabaloo never knows when he'll have to address the media. ESPN could have made a cameo at the Tulane Golf Classic and ask for perspective or comment on his Tiger-esque talents.

So upon our return from clobbering Rice, I had to instantly make a bee-line to Perlis where I was pampered and tended to by the most delightful gay sales person. He immediately knew what area of the store to steer me towards to lay my hands on this gorgeous belt. When all of a sudden he gasped.

A Tide elephant belt seemed to have been misplaced in front of the Tulane rack. He was profusely sorry. I waved off his apologies.

Mrs. Hullabaloo: "No worries, as long as it wasn't an loserwho belt"

Lovely gay salesperson: "Oh sweetie we don't even carry this belt for them. Those people could never afford to buy this belt. They might buy a tacky tee-shirt, but not a fine belt like this."

hilarious!

Mrs. Hullabaloo is much too elegant to mention monetary figures, but Mr. Hullabaloo definitely got himself a belt with how much that puppy was.

and Now, we have a NEW belt to add to the collection. It's not quite as fabulous as the woven belt, but it is very lovely and will make a very nice Valentine's Day gift for Mr. Hullabaloo.