Great Exudations

Eat your cœur out, people. We are moving, part time anyway, to Paris! We took le plunge and bought a small (Ha! It’s 5000 sq feet with parquet floors and a private elevator, as well as a champagne fountain) pied-à-terre on the Rive Gauche with a view of the Eiffel Tower. It’s 3 BR, 3.5 bath (with 1.5 solar-powered bidets). To putter around, we bought a new car in statement gold (above), heralding our arrival. We celebrated at an intimate dinner with the Macrons before spending the weekend at Johnny Depp’s Provençal village amongst Catherine Deneuve, Gad Elmaleh, Idris Elba, Audrey Tautou, Awkwafina, the Cubes (Mark Cuban), super-chef Bobby Flay, Charo, and U2. It was almost too much. Once we get settled in — we are taking the air in Zermatt for a month — please come for a visit. We have more Beluga caviar than should be legal!

My family is reliable for several things. One is novelty gifts at Christmas time. I recently became the proud owner of a pair of NERF basketball hoops (that I openly wanted) and a Bob Ross Christmas tree ornament. The shark glasses were from two years before. The second thing is intermittent reminders that for many years after “Jaws” (1975) was released, I adamantly refused to swim in the ocean. To which I answer, yes, and that’s why I’ve lived to tell about it…

And here are partial lyrics to the song “Walk On” by the masterful John Hiatt:

Someone called out to you
And it sounded just like crying
On a street where nobody
Even knows your name
Your mind was getting high on the sweet air
As your spirit was flying

Steam rising from the sidewalks
Of New Orleans after an evening rain
Steam rising from the sidewalks
After an evening rain

If you haven’t heard the song, buy the album. If you’ve never been to Sylvain, book your rez. But on the same trip in 2018, we also had dinner at a nice little French place called Lilette. We went for a nightcap next door and sat outside, when up walked Jennifer Coolidge. She was joining friends who gave her such a fawning reception that it seemed to me a little over-the-top. I mean, c’mon. While I had enjoyed her turn in “Best in Show” (her “we both love soup” line kills me every time!), I couldn’t recall her other films (my wife also knew her from “American Pie” and “Legally Blonde”). And I distinctly remember thinking that it was a little sad to be an aging actor who hadn’t really crossed the threshold of stardom — although I now think it best to be a steadily working character actor who barely gets recognized in public. But then here comes “White Lotus” in 2021-22, for which she won a Golden Globe plus an Emmy, and suddenly she is everywhere. She’s in every third ad and must be drowning in scripts. No longer just an ensemble cast bridesmaid. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can’t be long in coming. How wrong I was, and I couldn’t be happier about it. She seems cool as fuck. Girl, you got this…

It’s a rare sighting these days. The pay phone. Even more so the large scale phone booth. And is it strange that my first thought went to hygiene? We used to handle that plastic receiver without a care back in the day, but now? Full HAZMAT. Hand gel. Wipes. Mask and gloves. Blame COVID, I guess. The 50 cent charge doesn’t seem so bad, considering inflation, but who carries coinage? And doesn’t the change return slot seems too small? Maybe they were being used as a drug drop-site. Was that in “The Wire”?? You have to stay one step ahead to keep from falling ten behind in that battle. But is anyone nostalgic for these relics? Cellphones are a vast improvement, to be sure. The only real loss is a cinematic one. So many movie plots hinged on the pay phone scene. “Three Days of the Condor,” “Dirty Harry,” “All the President’s Men,” and of course “Phone Booth” (a death knell). The list would be the size of the phone book…. which used to be attached! Ripping out a page was a terrific film trope. But I guess when they make movies in-retro, ever so in vogue, they still need these props. Unfortunately, they sometimes screw up the sound of the coin mechanism catching. There must be a pay phone/booth warehouse somewhere in Burbank, CA…

“What’s Playing”

Sometimes you must scratch that itch

Skip a class or call in sick

Tweak the dials, flip the switch

Chase high art or candy-kitsch

As if all these things were equal,

The post-modern and Medieval,

That through you run prismatic

Only risking the ecstatic

So step right up and get your fix

A silent film or foreign flick

Of any stripe, yours to pick

Big and broad or minor niche

Be it second run or sequel,

Tragedy or treacle,

From crystal clear to enigmatic

Only risking the ecstatic