Michelle Obama can't wait to have 'pajama party' with Prince William and Kate Middleton's new baby boy

That's the headline at the Washington Examiner.

Royalty makes me puke.

And it's not just being a grouchy old man. I was a grouchy young man about this.

Story time.

I told this before, here it is again. Why? Because there they are again.

My friends drink so much they don't even remember this. And that makes me sad. But this was the ultimate historic Colorado camping trip. I tried to refresh their memories but failed. Such a huge thing for me, but such a small thing to them, just one of a hundred such things for them.

I had just met a Colorado businessman and he invited me to join his friends to a gold mine that one of them owned. They do such things. Actually, I must say, because of them I ended up doing a whole lot of fun things, like fly small planes to Lake Mead then rent a houseboat, trips to Mexico and such, but this was a true first for me. This second acquaintance was a real go-getter, very serious about investing, very serious about wrenching the last drop out of life, dead serious about owning a whole lot of things. He traveled excessively, and he invested wildly. We wouldn't be staying in a tent. We'd be staying in the barracks where the gold miners slept. He bought the whole place. A played out gold mine. It was a small operation. But still. A real gold mine.

That turned out to be a tiny house. Not anything like the military barracks with which I was familiar, that I had been visualizing.

W-a-a-a-a-a-a-y up there just below tree line. So I understood in the morning. We arrived at night and the thing I recall the second acquaintance saying upon opening the back door and walking into the place, "it's totally cold." The cold went right through the stones of the fireplace. Everything in the house, the house itself, the same temperature as the outside. The chairs inside the same temperature as the roof and the rocks outside. It's going to take awhile to warm up.

That was night. The day was almost comfortaby warm.

the second thing noticed are the thousands of dead flies piled at each window. A real horror scene when you're not expecting any such thing. If there was electricity then you could go around with a vacuum and fill the vacuum bag with dead flies in one minute of cleaning. We swept them out by the pound. (Possible 12% exaggeration for dramatic effect.)

The morning the owner examined the kitchen for signs of animal intrusion. Bears break in and scrounge around for anything to eat and they just flat don't care about property.

It is a shack-like house. With an outhouse to poop in. Of course, you pee anywhere you like.

The entrance to the goldmine was boarded up with big fat 4X4 beams. A pile of gold ore detritus is piled at the entrance, a very large pile that spilled down the hill. It's all low-grade gold ore but there is still gold visible in it. This ore utterly fascinated me. Each chunk has discernible dull gold flecks in it.

"Why don't we smelt it?"

"It's value is insufficient to bother. Transportation and processing would eat up the profit."

"Oh."

I kept a chunk as souvenir. And I fascinated over this chunk of gold ore for decades. I still have it.

Below the entrance to the goldmine, further down the hill, beavers created a dam, long abandoned, but there it remained for our examination. We waked across the beaver dam, balanced and bounced on the branches, tested its strength, and imagined beavers building it.

The owner filled a hummingbird feeder with sugar water and we sat in the front in folding lawn chairs drinking beer and watching the hummingbirds feed then do aerial acrobatics for their own amusement. They were high as kites off the sugar and sped it off directly above us. They disappeared as dots into the sky then retuned swooping near the speed of sound.  I watched a lot of air shows at military air bases, but I never saw anything like this. Birds doing loop-de-loos and barrel rolls high in the air and we were already high as the Colorado mountains go.

[Incidentally. The owner showed me how he makes a salad. Slice cucumber and onion into a bowl of sugar water with vinegar. Boom. Salad. And it was good too.]

We were situated inside a geologic bowl. On the far side above tree line we could see iconic Colorado bighorn sheep working their way down to the trees, and nearby the tiny house weirdly situated up there in isolation marmots were crawling and jumping all around the rocks and around the trees like squirrels. They were interested in sudden human activity. I never heard of a marmot.

Bighorn sheep, marmots, beavers, hummingbirds. Does it get anymore interesting than this?

We hiked up the hill behind the little house, our side of the bowl, still in the pines, then worked our way down to a stream and panned for gold. The most bogus activity ever invented. Nobody ever finds any gold. Never. And even trying is just stupid. Even in gold country. It's a joke, like snipe hunting. It's the one thing about that trip that I somewhat resented. But the hike back and forth was fascinating. Like pretend American Indians.

These men were all rough necks. There were six of us altogether. Plaid wool shirts, laced boots, beards, heavyset, tough exteriors and rough outdoor sports-minded natures. I was the youngest, least ripened. This was the weekend that Charles married Lady Di and completely out of character the men were talking about that international news enthusiastically. I was apalled. There we were in the wilderness surrounded by real Colorado in its most elemental brutality and beauty and they werre all wrapped up in a British royal wedding. I could not have been more confused.

"Why are you guys talking about them? For Christ's sake, we're American! We're fundamentally antithetic to British royalty. That antipathy is in our blood."

"Oh, the pomp."

"What? Are you all out of your minds?"

"Yes. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We like the pomp and the circumstance. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."

"I don't understand you at all."

In my view, they're unworthy celebrities. A drain on a modern nation well past its use-by date. And there I was surrounded by rough men voluntarily enthralled by it. I can never forget that bizarre turn.

Now here's the Obamas attaining the same form of celebrity. So they think, so we give it to them. Reaching out to acknowledge their own. So they think. So we allow. I find it pathetic, the doing and the giving and allowing.  I find it embarrassing. All this vapid unworthy celebrity to unearned celebrity that drains and seriously so, instead of screw you and your little prince too.

What happened to returning the bust of Winston Churchill?

Oh, one is serious politician instrumental in saving the Western world, and the other is simply insipid.

How does royalty fit with both or their ideas about socialism?

It doesn't. Inflated celebrity doesn't need to make sense.

Barack and I are thrilled to congratulate The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their newest arrival!  

We hope to meet him soon for a Kensington Palace pajama party. I’ll wear my robe! 

Bless your heart.

I like it when British make fun of themselves. It shows they know this whole thing is nonsense.