My Beautiful But (pun intended but comments not welcome)

This is gonna sound just a tad too much like "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" and I'm sorry for that, but...

You know how you can meet a really beautiful person? Easy on the eyes. Glorious hair, fantastic body, sweet dimples and a winning personality. We've all met them. We've all wanted to be with one at least once in our lives. Some of us have even become involved with them. But there's a substrain of the really beautiful person called the-really-beautiful-person-but. She's a really beautiful person but she's not very nice. That sort of thing. The more you get to know them, the uglier they become. And it doesn't diminish all their beautiful qualities. Time will do that soon enough. But suddenly they're not quite as attractive, our hearts don't do the little jig whenever we see them, they become what we term as "high maintenance" and we wonder if it's worth it. Some people are attracted to the high maintenance, low personality type of beautiful. Some people are only looking for trophy wives or red hot lovers. Some people are happiest with the beautiful but because they're beautiful buts themselves.

That's the way I feel about Block Island.

The interesting thing is that, over the last two or three years, my beautiful but island presented me with some friends I never thought I'd have and some opportunities I won't be able to take advantage of and it makes it a bittersweet kind of love for my beautiful but.

Block Island is still beautiful. Still fun. A great little island for the week-end and perfect to take along on a rowdy summer vacation. But the longer I get to know her, the more I find a certain underhandedness and dishonesty in her that the good points no longer can outweigh for me. There is a certain corruption of her soul that I fear will never be set right. There seems to be no guardian angel who, through a near death experience or a bolt out of the blue strike of conscience, can change her to be a more ethical and productive member of society. Block Island is sort of...well...Paris Hilton. She's beautiful (to some) and probably has a lot to offer, but most people who hang out with her only do so because of her money, her fame, or especially all the cool partying she does...she'll never know who her real friends are. Paris Hilton will never bend her incredible talent for walking just this side of trashy (and occasionally straying across the line) to curing the ills of this world - she's just more concerned with the lifestyle and the money. A great deal of this island is just like that.

Block Island: the Paris Hilton of the North.

Could be our new advertising slogan.