Prince Albert in the Can (Literally), or Twilight of the European Aristocracy

The Shemp in the triumvirate of recent high-profile deaths has been revealed as Prince Ranier of Monaco, inevitably described as "Europe's oldest-living monarch" and less regularly described as the widely admired ruler of a gambling-and-tax-haven whose children, especially Stephanie, helped define the concept of eurotrash over the past 25 years or so.

The new Grimaldi in charge will be Prince Albert, about as perfect an embodiment of unearned wealth and charmless aristocracy as imaginable (even having Grace Kelly as a mother couldn't quite put the bobsledding incompetent quite over the top in the brains, looks, or ambition departments). As is the case with Prince Charles of Ye Olde Englande, Albert exists almost solely to remind us of the superiority of modern liberal democracy, where an individual's position in life is more likely to rise and fall in accordance with one's talents and efforts rather than being fixed by heritage and geneaology.

The most recent revelation regarding Prince Albert's general fecklessness? In her wholly entertaining, smacked-out, I-was-a-junky memoir, A Paper Life, Tatum O'Neal reveals how Al's extended pre-coital toilette killed the mood:

As I lay on his bed, I could hear him brushing his teeth, coughing, and spitting in the sink. That did it for me. I jumped up, yanking my clothes back on, and called out some lame excuse about having forgotten my contact lenses. Then I fled into the night, running all the way back to my hotel, as if the palace guards were hot on my heels.