Love Takes a Toll on the Curious
It’s two days before Valentine’s Day. Do you know where your relationship is going?
You will if you call the Intimate Relationship Phone Survey. That’s right--now you can get an evaluation about how you and your snookums are doing right over the phone .
When you make the initial call to (303) 615-9202 (regular toll charges apply) a recorded voice explains, “You’ll be asked a series of in-depth, fascinating questions about your relationship with your partner.”
Just how in-depth and fascinating?
“Do the two of you agree about financial matters or about how money should be spent? Do you agree about how many children you should have? Do you agree on how to handle or act toward your relatives? Is your partner kind to you? Do you give enough time and effort to this relationship? Do you feel attracted to your partner?”
Of course, it doesn’t end there. For $1.49 a minute (charged to Visa or MasterCard) you can get an “extensive” evaluation of your relationship by “Ph.D. psychologists.”
We decided to pass on that part--buying a Cosmo and doing its monthly quiz is faster, cheaper and not quite as boring.
Even we could have thought up better questions--like:
If you’ve taken out the trash the last five times and it’s full again, do you grit your teeth and take it out for the sixth time in a row, or leave it there until your partner notices a skanky, rotting smell?
That, after all, is what relationships are really about.
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But the Cost Is Very ‘90s: Since we’re such romantics, we decided to see what the lucky-in-love types are going to be expecting when the delivery trucks arrive at their doors on Valentine’s Day. We took a quick pulse of the situation, which tells us the romantic holiday is going to be very retro.
At Edelweiss Chocolates in Beverly Hills, the old-fashioned heart-shaped box filled with mixed chocolates is still a biggie, even for year-round fat-gram counters, who happily fork over $190 for the 8-pound box.
“We don’t have anything trendy here,” said owner Sam Rosen.
At the Woods in Brentwood, owner Wayne Woods is reintroducing boxed roses (as in, use your own vase).
Because “nobody does it anymore,” he put together boxes nearly four feet long, long enough to hold the longest French roses.
The whole feeling--with delicate asparagus fern and passionate purple tissue--is very lovey-dovey. But then it should be as the boxed approach will cost $150 to $200 for a dozen roses.
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Hitting a Snag: Our weirdest invitation--if you can call it that--of the week was an empty pantyhose envelope.
How rude, we thought, when we studied the package that was marked “large.” (Imagine how we would have felt if it said tummy control.)
Was someone trying to tell us something?
Was this a new kind of junk mail?
No, no, no, it was a clever “coming soon” announcement for the Wolford boutique, a European stocking concern, which apparently is opening any minute now on Rodeo Drive.
