"Mercedes Took the Express Elevator up to Sid's Rarefied World"

The New York Post account of the Sid and Mercedes Bass divorce is PHENOMENAL. So well done! It’s the greatest thing ever, ever, EVER. Don’t miss the part where the young Mercedes Tavacoli Diba Kellogg Bass is described by rich person chronicler Charlotte Hays this way: “When she met the ambassador, she was heavier than she is now, and, of course, she’s no great beauty. But she was the ultimate geisha.” AND: “And so nine weeks after Mercedes, then 41, lobbed that fateful piece of bread, she called her husband, Ambassador Francis Kellogg, from her five-star Parisian hotel suite. ‘Goodbye, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m marrying Sid.’” OH YES. “On Dec. 10, 1988 — after Sid divorced his first wife, society queen Anne, settling with her for somewhere between $200 million and $500 million — the couple married in a $500,000 gala at New York’s Plaza hotel.” WAIT, AND THIS, from her married life with Sid: “There were originally four houses on the Texas property; the couple combined two of them, and Mercedes had a third, which she deemed unsightly, picked up and sent across town to serve as a home for single mothers.” Here, for your informed reference, is New York magazine’s Oct 20, 1986 piece: “Sid Bass and Mercedes Kellogg Stun Society.” Society! Stunned! The Dinner Roll Shot Heard Around the World (of the Upper East Side)! Still delicious!