A Little Skin.

Since the "Nanny Klagg versus Palmerwood" saga is, of necessity, on hold until the impending Palmer twins are born, I decided to try and tide the Minions' insatiable appetite for Palmerian adventure over with...

...a little skin.

In these bleak and joyless days of autumn, when memories of summer vacations are rapidly ebbing away and the days grow shorter and ever more colorless, what could be more welcome than the arrival of the "Palmerwood Illustrated Swimsuit Edition"? Gorgeous beaches, celebrities frolicking under tropical skies, and scenes of a carefree life of surf, sand, and sex?

the Swimsuit Edition--whether that of "Sports Illustrated" or "Palmerwood Illustrated"--is more than just pictures of scantily-clad hotties. It's a passport to the life we all wish we could lead. And it arrives at precisely the time of year when such an escape into fantasy is most needed.

So without further ado... the "Palmerwood Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2014--Too Hot for Facebook"!!!

Boy, there's nothing like the excitement of seeing the thing arrive, is there? One can almost feel one's fingertips all a-tingle.



I figured we'll roll out the Palmerwood Swimsuit Edition 2014 with the baronial, blue-blooded Palmers themselves on location at the ultraswanky and extremely expensive Vista Del Mar hotel at luxurious Smegaroon Beach. 

I'm always ready for the waves in the Speedo Powerflex racing suit in basic black ($39). Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. enjoy a traditional Palmer family beach activity: the Live Moray Eel Fight. Intrepid Stella A. wears a My Little Pony lycra one-piece ($16.99), and Young Leo J. looks fly in a SpongeBob drawstring suit ($14.99). The Greek takes in a few rays in a Laura Ashley floral print maternity suit ($124). 

And of course, why not let the help get in on the action, as well? Here, my gamekeeper, Oliver de Baliviere, isn't afraid to show his sensitive side in the form of a lovely, delicate butterfly tattoo (who knew?!?) in plaid trunks from J. Crew ($75) as he reels in the catch of the day... and Executive Chef Bechamel de Bouillabaisse grills 'em up beachside sporting the 80's retro classic "Aloha"-patterned Jams World trunks ($32.50) for the full-figured beach bum.

Now, insofar I am an insanely wealthy and glamorous international celebrity, it does occasionally happen that I run into other insanely wealthy international celebrities--even those I don't particularly care for. 

While shooting the "Palmerwood Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2014" on location at the ultraswanky Vista Del Mar, we bumped into a couple of old "friends"--why, it's Fox News owner and News Corp President and CEO RUPERT MURDOCH, and moronic Fox News personality MEGYN KELLY!

I hadn't encountered these two since my adventure in the Far West, and it was good to catch up. If you haven't seen it yet, you can read this thrilling tale of action and derring-do by clicking here.

Rupert looks...dashing...in a pair of Brooks Brothers Montauk Golden Fleece trunks ($95) and Megyn looks fetching as always in her Classic Locking Ballgag from Xtreme Restraints ($38.50), and leather thong from Leather'N'Heels ($14.99).

How on earth the children's Giant Voracious Carnivorous Salamanders happened to get out of their cages, I have no idea. None. None whatsoever. Honest.

But why should the living have all the fun? The Undead enjoy sun, sand, and surf as well as anyone. Plus the salt kind of pickles them, and helps them keep. Here, some of the Palmerwood zombies are returning to shore after a tubular afternoon. They're sporting the O'Neill Superfreak surfing wetsuit ($290.95) and the RonJon 10" Triple Stringer Veneer classic longboard ($549.00). 

Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J.'s nanny and archnemesis, dear old Nanny Klagg, prefers to go "au naturale" at the shore, but we talked her into this charming two-piece Gottex French-cut bikini ($75.95) for the "Palmerwood Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2014." As dear old Nanny Klagg showers off the beach sand while striking an Elle McPherson-esque pose, JP's feeble-minded but faithful valet, Cubbings, maintains his dignity in this vintage 1904 cotton men's one-piece suit and a Scala straw boater from St. Louis's own Levine Hats ($59.95).
 

And of course, I saved the best for last in this year's "Palmerwood Illustrated Swimsuit Edition." I know what you've been waiting for. We bring this sultry, smoldering Smegaroon saga of surf, salt, sand, sun, and skin to a close with the Palmerwood yetis modeling a little eye candy: the ever-popular Classic Whaletail from Teeny B ($98.00). 

Well, thanks for viewing, Minions. Now back to autumn.

The Help.

My life-partner, The Greek, recently informed me that she's knocked up. With twins.

I think it was never more aptly put than by the old Southern African-American lady who said, "Sweet Jesus, prop us up."

This revelation occasioned a sort of epiphany during which I realized that I'm screwed like a housecat.

However, fearless and selfless Republic-defending heroic type that I am, the thought of changing my name, getting plastic surgery, liquidating my accounts, funneling the money through untraceable offshore accounts in both Switzerland and the Caymans, purchasing property in Nome, Alaska, and living out the rest of my life in terrified anonymity in my own self-imposed Witness Protection Program never crossed my mind. Not for a minute.

No. Not even once. 

No, instead, I decided that I'd better look into getting some extra help around Palmerwood. Two children--even two such adorably rambunctious little poppets as Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J.--I can handle. Four's a different ballgame.

So it was that the precious little Palmer imps and I found ourselves dressed in our Sunday-go-t'-meetin' best in the magnificent, awe-inspiring, oak-panelled, suit of armor- and ancient family oil portrait-studded entrance hall of Palmerwood, ready to greet... whom? Whom? Whom were we awaiting??

 Why, it's dear old Nanny Klagg, the nice lady the agency sent over! With all the extra help we'll need around the place with two more Palmerlets, Nanny Klagg might be just the ticket. 

Well, I was just tickled by dear old Nanny Klagg. She seems like something straight out of some British Victorian novel. Why, she's an old dear!

The children, however, didn't seem to agree. Nor did Cubbings. Nor did the yetis lurking outside. But dear old Nanny Klagg just sipped her Earl Grey from one of the Palmerwood antique museum-quality Sèvres bone china teacups and chuckled in her dear old creaky, drafty old voice, "Don't worry a bit about it, Mister Palmer. I'm sure we'll all be the best of friends in no time."

Nobody seemed convinced of this but me, but hell, I pay the damned bills around here.

Feeling every confidence in dear old Nanny Klagg to get the situation well in hand, I made ready to leave for work and was just on my way out the door to defend the Republic we all hold so dear when the children accosted me.

"Precisely where the hell do you think YOU'RE going?" shrieked Intrepid Stella A. "You're not leaving us with HER?"

"Pop, not her," begged Young Leo J. "Pop, this woman has no sex appeal at all. None."

"The two of you shut your mouths," I retorted. "Young Leo J., if you recall the matter of the two 19-year-old Swedish au pairs, Daddy's American Express card, Daddy's G-4, and the week you three spent at the Sands Casino in Macau, you'll understand why I hired an old bat well past her breeding years. Now you two be good, mind dear old Nanny Klagg, and don't bother your mother. Daddy will be back soon. The damned Republic we all hold so dear isn't going to defend itself."

And off I went. 

Well! It wasn't but a minute after I left that dear old Nanny Klagg set about confirming the children's suspicions. The door had hardly closed behind my tauntaun when she decided to clear out the clutter in the nursery.

"Precisely where the HELL do you think you're going with THOSE?" demanded Intrepid Stella A.

"Language, my dear," Nanny Klagg creaked. "Little ladies don't talk like longshoremen, do they? We're going to have to clean up that mouth. Then we'll do something with that hair and make you look like a proper little lady. And I don't think children need weapons like these. I'll just pop down to the armory and return these to that nice Mr. Dailey and that nice Mr. Miller."

"Lady, you thought WRONG," yells Young Leo J. "You don't get it. This is PALMERWOOD."

The children weren't the only denizens of Palmerwood whom Nanny Klagg antagonized in short order. No sooner had she denuded the nursery of assault rifles, grenade launchers, katanas, broadswords, harpoon guns, Stinger missiles, and handguns than she set about denuding the yetis.

"They smell like wet wolfhound," she said, and fired up the Braun clippers.

Now, JP has suffered the depredations of yetis for years. Years. Their low-down, nouveau-riche, cigar-swipin', Scotch-cadgin', quail-stuffed-with-wild-boar-and-fennel-sausage-gobblin', capercaillie-in-white-wine-and-truffle-sauce-snarfin' ways have been a thorn in his side for quite some time now. But he'll be the first to admit that that there is something absolutely heart-rendingly pathetic about a shorn yeti.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. At least temporarily. Nanny Klagg's presence has forged an alliance between forces which, until now, had been the bitterest of rivals and the most implacable of enemies.

A sinister, candlelit conclave takes place in the old barn.

"Look at us!" Young Leo J. snarls. "She pomaded my hair and put me in this fruity Little Lord Fauntleroy get-up. Death to her. DEATH."

"Quit whining," Intrepid Stella A. growls. "Look at me. I'm in a &$%ing PINAFORE, for Christ's sake. I look like Anne of Green $%@&ing Gables."

Both the staff and the estate's most terrifying monsters--the yetis, the zombies, the giant squid, and the children--agree to put aside their differences. Even Cubbings and Executive Chef Bechamel de Bouillabaisse, who have despised each other for decades, agree to bury the hatchet...for now.

Chef de Bouillabaisse, infuriated by Nanny Klagg's disdain for his vichyssoise, agrees to stop trying to make calamari out of the Giant Squid (infuriated by Nanny Klagg's plans to drain "that malarial swamp," as she refers to beautiful Palm Lake). The yetis agree to stop raiding Chef de Bouillabaisse's kitchen and wine-cellar. Cubbings agrees to stop chasing the yetis out of the mansion. The yetis agree to stop swiping the zombies' arms and legs to use as croquet mallets.

The zombies just kind of stand there and groan. They don't know much, but they know they don't like Nanny Klagg, either.

Led by Intrepid Stella A., the warring factions take a blood oath of secrecy and loyalty: DEATH TO NANNY KLAGG.

As inspiring as taking the oath of murder and mayhem was, sobriety sets in quicky. My children, having spent their formative years in the company of zombies, yetis, chupacabras, werewolves, vampires, attack-trained birds of prey, and their father, are deeply realistic. Fearsome though the entities gathered around this table may be, they recognize that Nanny Klagg is a formidable adversary.

And so they decide to call in reinforcements. They employ a little-known and poorly understood psychic phenomenon known as Creepy Little Kid Telepathy to reach out across the ether and summon the most dastardly and dangerous entities possible. What, or whom, could they possibly be reaching out to across the psychic airwaves? What terrifying forces are they attempting to contact on the astral plane???

Friends of mine will know that I am, of course, highly skeptical about the supernatural. Ghosts. Telekinesis. Chi. Karma. Angels. ESP. The Lord. All that stuff I'm pretty sketchy about.

Nonetheless, I can't deny that something very strange indeed happened when Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. employed Creepy Little Kid Telepathy (CLKT) (tm) to call for help in their struggle against dear old Nanny Klagg.

The newest Palmers, all veiny and slimy and gross, were minding their own business, floating serenely and quietly in amniotic goo. Suddenly, an urgent psychic request awakens them! Their eyes open! Expensive liquor, Cuban tobacco, and old Palmer family portraits mysteriously appear in the ol' "bag of waters," as the OBGYN rather grossly referred to it!

"Well, well," the freshest Palmers grin sinisterly, "We don't really understand concepts like 'good' and 'evil' yet, but it appears we'll soon have the chance to cause mayhem and chaos! Sit tight, siblings. This withered old Klagg bag doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell."

October.

While autumn is, in general, a bleak and joyless season, I've got a sneaking fondness for the month of October. It's the month when ghouls walk abroad. That in itself is fun.

In one chapter of Ray Bradbury's magnificent "From the Dust Returned," the Elliott family, a collection of undefined spooks, ghouls, and ghosts who live in a big rambling farmhouse in northern Illinois, are wracked by an identity crisis. Who, or what, are they?

They are, they finally decide, in need of no better nomenclature than "The October People." "We are the October People!" they exclaim triumphantly, and, having laid that question to rest, move on to other matters.

And we've all got a bit of October People in us, don't we? Well, the baronial Palmers of Palmerwood sure as hell do. 

I'm always somewhat inconvenienced when the Palmer Family Curse rolls around this time of year. Why, I've already had to decline invitations to three chic, swank, celebrity-studded soirees this week alone. And the Diddies, the -Z's, and the Albrights will be so disappointed.

However, our "October malady," as my grandmere delicately referred to our condition, is no reason not to indulge in a little father-son male bonding in the wild and far off reaches of the estate.

And then there's the Annual Halloween Pilgrimage to Palmer Gardens, the Palmerwood private family cemetery. 

On that night, we wake the children at midnight and we all traipse merrily, still in our pj's, down to this rather unkempt and somewhat eerie corner of the estate to see the ghosts of the ancestral Palmers rise from their graves and walk freely through the wind-lashed October night. 

Those passing through the grounds on that wicked night report strange sights and sounds. And if you listen carefully, you just might hear spectral voices complaining about politics, lying through their teeth about their exploits, telling raunchy jokes, and fighting about politics.

Death can but remove our carnal forms. It cannot excise our basic nature. 

Autumn And Its Discontents.

Autumn brings with it few pleasures. One of those very few is the sort of grudging realization that, since there's not much to be done outdoors, one might as well curl up in one's sumptuous oak-paneled library with a Cohiba, a bottle of something peaty, amber-colored, and aged not less than 18 years, and a good book while the storms rage outside. 

Not, however, are these pleasures for the scions of the ancient Palmer dynasty: Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. The passing of the Paradiso of summer into the Purgatorio of fall and the eventual Inferno of winter (sounds counterintuitive, I know, to refer to winter as an "inferno," but who am I to quibble with Dante?) occasions something worse than grief in them. The passage of the seasons engenders ennui. 

Gone are the days of chasing the giant squid around Palm Lake, the days of tearing recklessly through the woods, the days of croquet and Lawn Darts. It's cold, wet, and joyless outside. And now that the rain and gloom of a Midwestern autumn have descended upon stately Palmerwood, they're bored out of their socks. 

"There's nothing to doooooooo," grumble the Palmerlets bitterly."I'm booooooooooored. Boooooooring." 

This portends no good. Idle hands, so they say, are the Devil's playground. And fewer sets of mitts on the planet are, at the moment, idler, or, in general, more prone to deviltry than those of JP's adorable lil' moppets. Evil gestates in their tiny brains, and mischief will soon be abroad. 

In desperation for distraction, the Palmerlings decide to explore some of the lesser-known reaches of Palmerwood in search of distraction and havoc. 

They find themselves in a dusty, ill-lit, and long untraversed corridor on the first floor of the far north-northwestern wing. Portraits of some of the less savory Palmer antecedents grin malevolently down upon them. And they discover, under the Persian-silk Kerman floor-runner, a trap door. What, oh what, could possibly await them beneath it?

The fearless lil' poppets descend an ancient stone stairway into a cavernous--uh---cavern yawning beneath the stately halls and teak floors of Palmerwood above. A vast cathedral-like space opens above them--bats flutter in the darkness. Armed only with a guttering candle and their infinite capacity for mischief, the Palmerlings venture deeper into the Mysteries of Palmerwood. Whatever, oh whatever, shall they find?

In a chamber just off the main space at the bottom of the stairs, a wondrous sight meets the small Palmerkins' eyes: the fabled Palmer Treasure Room, long thought to be no more than a legend. Sacks of gold doubloons sit like fat, drunken pirates--treasure chests piled up like children's building blocks line the walls. Art treasures from around the world are scattered hither and yon, and great amphorae overflowing with jewels, gem-studded gold chains, crowns and tiaras, and other priceless adornments of royal princesses long gone stand like sentinels.

But the lil' Palmerels' eyes are drawn like bees to honey to a strange, rather Egyptian-looking headdress perched on an old steamer trunk. And next to the headdress lies a mouldering old book on the cover of which is written in fading, spidery handwriting, "THE JOURNALS OF FFOULKE GRYMCROFT-SMERTHWICK PALMER, OBE."

Intrepid Stella A. and Young Leo J. open the old book they found lying beside the odd Egyptian headdress and begin to read its yellowed, crumbling pages. 

Great zounds! It's the journal of JP's great-great-great-granduncle, the famed explorer Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, Baron Palmer, OBE, who discovered the tomb of Pharaohess Khol-Dah-Nom-Khamen outside Qasr-Farafra in 1862! Fascinating!

In it, they learn some interesting facts. First, that Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick preferred to employ belly-dancers instead of ordinary Egyptian laborers (which really wasn't much of a surprise); and secondly, that the strange headdress that Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick discovered inside Khol-Dah-Nom-Khamen's sarcophagus has some... some rather interesting powers.

Now, my children, while charming, well-mannered, extremely clean, and undoubtedly very highly gifted, are sometimes possessed of less than superb judgment.

When one comes across an ancient artifact from a lost civilization--a thing redolent of mysterious occult power and positively dripping with ominous supernatural puissance--one might hesitate before putting it on one's head.

However, that's precisely what Stella did.

Having observed the somewhat uncanny effects on his elder sister of donning the ancient Egyptian headdress in the Fabled Legendary Palmer Treasure Room, Young Leo J., one would think, would be a little hesitant to slap it on his own gourd.One would be wrong. Young Leo J. also puts on the ancient Egyptian headdress, although he's a little more Zen about the process.

The precious, precocious progeny, the Palmerwood poppets, race madly back up the ancient, winding stone staircase. Have their wishes come true? Was the account they read in the Journals of Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, OBE, of the old Egyptian headdress's strange powers true? Whatever, oh whatever, shall they find waiting for them upstairs??

Meanwhile, back in the library, I greeted the sudden appearance of the world's largest fishtank (Stella's wish) and my own somewhat precipitate transformation into the DaddyMonster (a creature that appears out of nowhere and chases the children around when they've been rotten) with little more than a quirk of my eyebrow and a sigh.

"Cubbings," I growled, "be so good as to call Dr. Pooley, Rabbi Felsenfeld, Father O'Herlihy, and whichever other experts in healthcare and supernatural afflictions and ailments you can think of, would you? The children appear to have found that $#@&ing old Egyptian wishing-hat that my great-great-great-granduncle, Doctor Sir Ffoulke Grymcroft-Smerthwick Palmer, Baron Palmer, OBE, brought back."