Film Review: He's Just Not That Into You

The recent romantic comedy, He's Just Not That Into You, was an unexpected burst of truth on contemporary dating in an age of Facebook, email writing, and text message disasters. Gigi (played by the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin) waits at the phone every night for her crush to call her. She fails to see the difference between a. men who are flirting with her at a bar because they are drunk, b. men who want to date her, and c. men who never want to see her again.

The manager at Gigi's local bar lets her in on some heterosexual man insight: "If a guy is into a girl, then he will make it happen, so if he hasn't called her or asked her on another date, he's just not that into her." Women often give bad advice to other women: for example, if a girl is desperately in love with a guy for a period of many years, then her female friend might say to her, "He's definitely gay, and that's why he's dating that incredibly masculine girl." Alternatively, she might say, "Men are like pears -- they have to ripen in a brown paper bag before they are ready to commit to the one they really love. He just needs another 2-12 years to really ripen!"

Gigi ends up converting the wanker-commitment-phobic-barman to a prince who is ready for a real relationship. Moral of the story: miracles can happen in fictitious versions of Baltimore that are populated by incredibly attractive people.

The Showcases

I had a true Bavarian Christmas with my endlessly entertaining German cousins. They are my third cousins, so technically they are considered "kissing cousins," which is an expression that either denotes "distant cousins familiar enough to kiss" or "cousins that are distant enough in relation that it is not the end of the world to kiss them." Either way, the expression is gauche, and probably not the best holiday dinner-table conversation.

After we celebrated Christmas with a roast goose at an old-school Bavarian golf, polo, and hot-air-ballooning club, my cousins and I continued to the bar where many of the German guests had brought their dogs with them during after-dinner drinks. One older man and his wife, who seemed Russian in temperament, had two Chihauhaus in tow (very 'Paris Hilton' and un-German of them). When the couple exited the lounge, my cousin asked, "What kind of dog is that?" and the portly man responded, "A very expensive kind." When we commented on the tiny dog's pink diamond-encrusted collar, the owner responded, "Yes, the collar was more expensive than the dog."

I guess on Christmas some people have kissing cousins to keep them company, and some people have their blonde wives and very small dogs.

Maple Syrup Meltdown

As a way of recovering from the inevitable traumas of the holiday season, Parisian women flock to the hammams, where they can sweat out the toxins of too much wine, too many cigarettes, and too many family dynamics. I had a splendid time sweating away inside the bathhouse of the Moroccan hammam at the Mosque de Paris. It was liberating to be in a room full of semi-nude women who were bonding with their friends while rubbing each other down with special black soap that exfoliates the body.

Dizzy from the hot steam in my face, I went on to the gommage process, which involved a small Russian woman scrubbing me from head-to-toe with a bristly glove. After a massage, more awkward sweating, showering, and public nudity, I was revived -- adrift in understanding dreams and transported to a land far more exotic than grey wintry Paris.

Pimp of the Week: Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant is apparently quite the "Renaissance man," as he is proficient at both golf and tennis, buys paintings, is reasonably literate, and even dabbled with novel writing. Since Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a new romantic comedy premiered last week, USA Today did a little interview about the wonders that make up Hugh Grant. His "rakish" persona has charmed me ever since I saw him acting like a complete wanker in Bridget Jones's Diary. He cozies into, and perhaps even invented, the 'emotionally unavailable men' roles.

In the USA Today interview, Grant, admitted to the dangers of vanity: "I stopped Googling myself. Life improves exponentially. I think the same thing applies to reviews." He also confessed to his penchant for showering girls with expensive accessories and shopping at Chanel. But I think it is mostly because he loves the way the salesgirls make him feel about himself.

"of indeterminate age"

While searching for a decent apple at the corner epicerie near my apartment one frostbitten Sunday night, the two overly solicitous shopkeepers asked me, "What are you looking for, young lady?" I told them I was looking for a good apple, but I was having a hard time in my search, since most of the fruit was shriveled and over-ripe.

The flirtatious men tried to sell me their bad apples, and then when I refused, they said, "Take a banana! Why don't you want a banana?" I found the symbolism too laughable to permit me any more time wasted on the sidewalk with these lurking fruit sellers. And then one of the guys exclaimed, "If you buy my banana, you have to sleep with me tonight!" It was an interesting sales technique that I would never suggest repeating if you are working on commission.

Coquelicot Boulangerie in Montmartre

In my Parisian boulangerie-hopping, I recently went to Coquelicot in Montmartre for a delicious and cozy brunch. It was the first snow this year, so my sister's croque monsieur was a perfect plate of French comfort food, made with ultra-crusty rustic bread, a hint of succulent Béchamel sauce inside, and a covering of earthy gruyere cheese. It was a Parisian's version of the morning-after eggs Benedict in Manhattan. And with our steaming bowls of café au lait, my sister and I could not have asked for more.

Coquelicot is not only my favorite purveyor of neighborhood baguettes but it is also a homey atmosphere where you can escape from the sometimes-brutal unfriendliness prevalent in the more elegant (but less authentic) neighborhoods of Paris.

Pearls In Wine

My dear Franco-American friend was forced to attend a priggish British boarding school at the young age of eleven. When he took the admissions test, he realized that even though he spoke perfect English, he couldn't read or write it. Though he quickly got over the language barrier, boarding school presented many other menacing surprises: there was the typical hazing rituals by the older boys -- the most notable was called "bogwashing," and you can imagine how that turned out.

One afternoon my friend was in a fanciful mood of understanding dreams and enjoying the sunlight when a strange man approached him, accompanying him on his walk by the river. Eventually the fellow propositioned my friend to "crawl through a hole and go into a place where men went cottaging." My friend kindly declined the offer. He survived his prep school years and is well-equipped for the next time someone tries to stick his head in a toilet or to take him down the rabbit hole, so to speak. No matter how effete, boarding school seems to be a decent preparation for the real world.

"goaty look"

When New Yorkers come to Paris, two worlds collide, but the Manhattan dynamic always seems to overpower the effeminate Frenchie ways. I recently went for a night out at Le Montana, an iconic 1960s club in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The New Yorkers in the crowd insisted on taking vodka and tequila shots, which was a very un-French choice. Expensive champagne would have been more contextually appropriate, but once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker, I guess.

The evening devolved into a chaotic game, and before I knew it I put my men expert skills to the test and decided to vacate the premises. Dancing on tabletops and doing jump splits is one thing in the "dirty sexy money" atmosphere of New York City, but it is quite another thing in the semi-pretentious pseudo-refined city of Paris.

"of no education"

The Fellini exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris gave me a glimpse into the sexy film sirens who ignited the Italian director's alleged womanizing personality. But in reality Fellini remained devoted to his wife, distinguishing him from many of the wankers I encounter in everyday life. Fellini even considered his classic "Casanova" character to be incapable of truly loving women, since Casanova was obsessed by a fantasy idea of the female sex. Fellini was a bit of a "men expert," obsessed by the pretty things in the world: the circus, breasts, asses, movie stars, parties, Dionysian Ecstasy, excessively large hats, etc.

In Fellini's 1965 film, Juliet of the Spirits, the pimp of cinema puts his feminist ways to the test by illustrating the complicated dreams and psychic energy surrounding a frustrated Italian housewife, Juliet. She lives a terribly traditional New England existence devoted to her philandering husband, and enters into the surreal world of her hypersexual champagne-drinking prostitute neighbor. Juliet finds herself climbing into orgy-laced tree houses and being propositioned by a young Adonis. She struggles through a chaotic game of understanding dreams and being haunted by emotionally unavailable men.

But once her husband elopes with a perky young model, Juliet realizes that her life will be better off without him and that she is finally liberated. Juliet of the Spirits is like a revolutionary lush decadent surreal version of Under the Tuscan Sun.

"A Dead Adder"

When two people decide to take the next step in their relationship and move in together, disaster inevitably ensues ... It can become a chaotic game of emotionally unavailable men, secretive women, and at the end of the day, it's all about money sense and logistical convenience.

Gauche Things To Do To Your Lover-Roommate:

1. Moving in with them merely because their apartment is more conveniently located to your place of work.

2. Shouting at them before 9am -- especially if it is in order to take their laptop from them and use it as an ironing board.

3. Insulting the way that they use kitchenware. (e.g. if they are cooking pasta for the two of you, avoid saying things like, "Do you intentionally put the stove up that hot? It scorches the pan!")

4. Snoring so loudly that it prevents your lover from getting a good night's sleep, and then reprimanding them for escaping from the bed in the middle of the night to sleep on the couch.

5. Insulting them for wearing "too many clothes" in the apartment, and expecting them to be always in the nude. Then accusing them of being "A Puritan." (This is a common problem in Franco-American relationships.)

6. Using your lover's apartment as a laundromat and office, because your own slum apartment is cold, drafty, under construction, and without a washing machine.

Credit Card Security Code

My dear friend from boarding school is stranded in Manhattan working in a soul-sucking PR job. She has been doing some 'email writing' on the topic of emotionally unavailable men. The latest guy in her life is a hunky magazine publishing tycoon and an extraordinary lover. As he is a bit older, he already has a kid and is 'in the process of divorce.'

The romance began as most New York City romances do -- with a series of ambiguous text message exchanges. But before she knew it, my friend was falling in love with him and his adorable son too. The three of them spent a cozy weekend in the Hamptons, but she quickly realized that he was using her as a babysitter. He even asked her to take his son out for a walk, so that he could sleep in late one morning.

In typical Wanker of the Week form, he disappeared from her life as soon as she started displaying her affection toward him. Since the Hamptons weekend, she has not received so much as a courtesy text. He has even hoarded her favorite scarf and book at his house and seems to be too caught up in massaging his own ego and avoiding intimacy to use girls for anything but sex and babysitting.

Bride Kidnappings

The shopping experience at the Nespresso boutique in Paris, or in any city across the world, is comparable to a mind-numbingly mass-market-high-design Apple Store extravaganza (except that you can't reserve online with a 'Genius Bar' at the Nespresso store). It's partly a chaotic game of waiting in the excessively long lines, and partly an espresso-themed high museum of art.

I just find it absurd that all these Europeans insist upon making their daily coffee in these excessively well-designed little machines that only function with these nipple-like metallic capsules in all the colors of the rainbow. It's very wasteful, and it epitomizes a fundamental flaw of many French people: they are obsessed with having everything (especially if it's food-related) 'just their way' and custom-made for them if possible. But at the same time they are hyper-critical of the 'wasteful, consumeristic, fat, un-eco-conscious Americans.'

So at the end of the day they are hypocrites drinking espresso and throwing tin capsules into the Seine River, while hoping to compensate for their political obscurity, by drinking coffee in their antique apartments out of extremely overpriced and mass-produced espresso machines, just like every other idiot-bourgeois Tom, Dick, and Harry in Hong Kong, Hawaii, or New Hampshire.

Francis Bacon Paintings

Pierrot Le Fou is a garishly sumptuous New Wave French film featuring the studly Jean-Paul Belmondo, as Pierrot, and the angel-faced Anna Karina, as Marianne. Pierrot begins in the throngs of a boring bourgeois party and quickly skips out on his wealthy Italian wife to sleep with the gamine babysitter, Marianne. But her apartment is a crime scene of smuggled weapons and ambiguously bloodied Algerian gangsters.

So Pierrot and Marianne make a chaotic game of road-tripping it to the French Riviera, to escape the terrorists and live as outlaws in the pleasure of their youthful good looks. But life on the beach soon turns to ennui: after Pierrot made the mimbo-wanker move of dropping his real life for fantastic escapedes with princess in flight Marianne, he becomes just another one of those emotionally unavailable men and takes to reading philosophy books and writing diary entries. Not even the vivid pop art colors and Mediterranean journey to nowhere can save this tragic couple.

Shecky’s Girls Night Out

This week a scandalous event took place at Drouot, the famous Parisian auction house: the police discovered that a commissaire-priseur (the coveted and pimp position of auctioneer/master of ceremonies) and a gaggle of sneaky auction-assistant-mignons orchestrated the theft of a massive amount of precious objects. A Gustave Courbet painting worth 1.3 million dollars was recovered, along with expensive watches, drawings, and other antiquated loot.

Drouot is a veritable high museum of art, but at the end of the day it is a business. And even if there's artistic prowess and Parisian propriety involved, when things turn sour, it's just another chaotic game of "dirty sexy money."

International Shoes Sizes

A strange man approached me when I was nodding off in the foyer to the Louvre Museum's Decorative Arts Library. I thought it was a place exclusively frequented by gay men and the girls who carry their purses, but I was wrong.

I was too tired to ignore the semi-charming stranger, and he somehow obtained my cell phone number, but at least I gave him a fake name. After I skipped out on his invitation to see a boring exhibition at the museum, he called me a week later and confronted me for my lack of textual reciprocation. He claimed to be "a nice man" who only wanted "friendship" and "conversation." I was skeptical, as I consider myself somewhat skilled (and not naïve) in the 'men expert' milieu.

There was no fussy email writing, but we met up over a casual orange juice on a grand boulevard. Even though I told him that I was "in a relationship," he tried kissing me multiple times during the orange juice. And he kept exclaiming with enraptured delight: "You're a simple girl!" He meant it as a compliment, but somehow the translation fell flat on me.

Amtrak Routes

As an expatriate lurking in the snowy streets of Moscow and sporting ridiculous fur hats, my friend recently met an older Russian man who was selling his book of poems on the sidewalk. She apologized to the poet for not being able to buy his book, saying that she did not understand enough Russian. But he gave her some sage advice: "If you just keep on reading and reading you will someday understand!" She ended up buying the book.

The young American girl and the old school Russian poet hit it off, and soon they were exchanging email addresses. He exclaimed to her, "I hope you find a great man to love you very much!" She said, "I hope so too." He intuited that she played piano as a child and urged her to take up the instrument again because it would lead her to a great man who would love her. The elderly poet also told her that he loves his wife very much. A real prince in the Russian night, spreading love to warm the wayward American girl in the frigid Moscow air.

A Man of Convenience

The Children's Hour is an old-school Audrey Hepburn film with Shirley MacLaine, based on a classic Lillian Hellman play. I was naturally inclined to attend a midday screening of it, because the story takes place at an all-girls New England boarding school in the 1950s and takes the central theme of The Crucible (vicious gossip) to a lesbian level.

Hepburn and MacLaine play the headmistresses who develop an unhealthily, codepent, platonic love for each other. A naughty young pupil tells her grandmother that the teachers are engaging in (debaucherous) lesbian acts. The rumor spreads, the girls are removed from the school, and the two women become social pariahs trapped alone in their drafty farmhouse-boarding-school.

MacLaine realizes that she is actually a lesbian, and the film ends with her suicide. Meanwhile, the dashing local doctor pines away after Hepburn, and watches her from behind a tree as she visits her best friend's grave. The film's message is both progressive and 1950s in nature: homosexuals are shamed to seclusion by the ignorance of society; homosexuals die of shame, at the end of their ropes (to put it gauchely).

"Chicken Cooked In Coca-Cola"

In a surprise birthday party for a ravishing French-Italian woman, the sangria and champagne cocktails flowed, her husband presented her with some lovely diamond-sapphire jewels, and her two pretty pre-pubescent children looked on at the spectacle. For the Spanish-themed soirée I wore a bolero-inspired sweater and red tights, so it was a bit of Almodovar in Paris. We ate delicious tapas (sardines, octopus, peppers, meatballs, and manchego abounded), and then there was the requisite dancing portion of the night.

I put my red tights to the test and did a few jump splits. The more middle-aged women were aghast, and perhaps a bit put-off by my limber dancing habits. But when I exited the party, the hostess/birthday girl was delighted: she thanked me for "l'ambiance."

For a good social atmosphere, it is necessary that everyone let loose and open up a bit. I just hope that by the time I turn 30-something, my husband and kids will be there watching me eat meringue-filled raspberry-chocolate cake and observing as my friends do ridiculous things on the dance floor.

Getting Off Easy

In a dinner party of diplomats from Delhi, aristocrats from Paris, and me (a wayward semi-'student' lurking from Boston), a French expert in the global water system told me an apocalyptic statement: in 2043 there will be a melting of the glacier ice caps, and our world will be submerged in water.

I suddenly recalled the last time a Frenchman pretended to be sure of a disastrous event looming in the future: about two months before the economic crisis in The States began, a Parisian financial expert told me that the economy in America was about to collapse. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but now I am more wary when I hear ominous statements from the often-incompetent French.

Maybe we will all be swimming in 2043, and there will be a revolution in stilt-style architecture as a result. Or maybe we will all drown. Either way, I am going to try to drink more wine, meet more strangers, and take a few more crazy chances in 2010. Or perhaps later today.

"Promise me you'll never cut your hair."

My friend recently had an unfortunate evening in Moscow that involved "a charming cocktail of vodka beer rum wine baiileys rum and our old friend jager" (according to her latest email). And at that point she left her purse in the "cab" (which was actually a civilian car, since proper taxis don't really exist in Moscow). She returned back to her boyfriend's apartment with nothing but a few kopecks and a stick of gum. The lost purse was filled with vital items (like credit cards, and passports, and prescription meds, and reading glasses, and the visa permitting her to stay in said semi-sinister Eastern European country).

But instead of suffering through twelve years of standing in line to obtain her new passport and documents (not to mention the numerous mean Russian ladies who would yell at her in the process), it turns out that the bad-drinking-etiquette-silly-American-girl-traveling-in-cold-climates fairy was watching over her that night. The "cab" driver found her purse and handed her documents over to the Russian militia, after stealing her camera, cash, and iPod. She was so delighted to get her passport and papers back that she felt the "cab" driver deserved all the other stuff as a reward. Let's just call it karma.

Settle The Tab

In New York City there is a well-kept secret for young women in need of low-rent accommodations. At The Webster Apartments you can have a single room, two hot meals a day, and maid's service for a mere 250 dollars a week. The only catch: no males allowed.

There is a night watchwoman who patrols the corridors, making the social scene at The Webster reminiscent of a woman's ward in a mental institute circa 1960. But in all seriousness, I have applied and been accepted to The Webster on two separate occasions in my life. But my rent-free maid's quarters (storage space) on Park Avenue proved a better deal.

But The Webster is populated by more than 20-something unpaid interns and aspiring actresses. A recent article described a middle-aged resident who was living at The Webster after a messy divorce. She went from suburban splendor to urban nunnery. But hopefully she will revenge her wanker-husband and stow away a fetching young guy in her closet to conceal him from The Webster's boy-patrol.

A Bulldog Shot

One of the most endearing ways to pass a Sunday afternoon is at the guignol theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens, where Parisian children become entranced by tranny-looking marionettes beating each other on the heads with sticks, brooms, feather dusters, and other phallic objects.

On this particular Sunday there was a brawl between a woman and the portly owner of the theatre. He wanted her to move to a back row to make more room in front for the children. During the dispute a mysterious mustached man stood up and called the room to order.

The curtain finally rose to reveal a magical land where Prince Charming underwent various metamorphoses, the Pretty Princess fainted frequently, and the Evil Witch tried to spoil everyone else's chance at happiness. Maybe she had a traumatic childhood. Or maybe she was just born that way.

"Is that real snakeskin?"

I recently went to the cinema at noon, because it is cheap at that time of day, and because Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience was only showing once a week in one movie theatre in all of Paris. Sasha Grey, an award-winning 21-year-old porn star, plays Chelsea, a high-class Manhattan call girl who manages to keep a boyfriend while seeing her various clients.

The film has a pseudo-documentary style, outlining stories of Chelsea's life: the brands of her high heels, the types of alcohol her clients offer her, the astrological numbers of her week. And then there are scenes of some rich New York City republican wankers jetting off to Las Vegas for a boys' weekend. They gripe about the economic crisis and the 2008 presidential election, and then one of them proclaims that all women are evil, blood-sucking psychopaths.

The Girlfriend Experience is sort of like a dark, soporific, new millennium version of Pretty Woman, with a porn star instead of Julia Roberts, and an infinite Manhattan bleakness instead of a happy ending.

Perfect Empathy

Through an anonymous exchange of phone numbers at a classic Parisian club, I recently met a minor French TV celebrity. That is to say, he intrigued me, so I scribbled my cell phone number onto a slip of paper and 'dropped' it into his hand while leaving the lounge. This sort of behavior is typically labeled as "forward" or "desperate" or "gauche," but sometimes you meet someone and you don't want to risk never seeing them again.

I struggled through a prolonged series of textual exchanges with Le Papillon du Soir ('The Butterfly of the Night," aka. the mystery man's nickname from the French press). While he seemed like a nice, well-educated, charming little French man from a vaguely Catholic and vaguely aristocratic family, it turns out that all he wanted was one thing from me ...

When I asked him why he was so fixated on playing out a sexual scenario involving masks at midnight and a minimal exchange of words, he replied with the following Wanker of the Week text messages:

1. "Cause I love sex and friendship not more darling!"

2. "Why? I just like sex but I want to stay alone darling..."

Moral of the story: 'Butterflies of the night' are similar to vampires, so be careful where you 'drop' your phone number.

"For the wig, it's as you like."

In the 1920s when the economy was sizzling and rich people could afford to splurge on small cottages by the sea, and a Rembrandt or two, A Spanish baron started buying some paintings. His son inherited them and then bought even more paintings. And then in the 1980s the son married a former Miss Spain and the dynamic couple founded one of Madrid's top art destinations, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Carmen Cervera, the beauty-queen-turned-art-aficionado demanded that the walls of the museum be painted salmon-pink and that her portrait be painted so that she would look like a woodland fairy wearing a pantsuit, in true Palm-Beach Princess style.

Of all the things to invest in, paintings are a sure bet. At least if you lose all your money you can sleep soundly, knowing that you helped the careers of some starving artists, or some well-fed Sotheby's auctioneers.

"he buys me dinner."

With visions of meeting lovely strangers in the subway dancing in my head, I endured one of the more jam-packed metro rides of my life. It was the sort of occasion when you are not sure whose body parts are touching you, and so you try your hardest to assume that everyone around you has showered recently (though in Paris that is a relative impossibility).

All of a sudden I felt a hand brushing up against me in exactly the private 'spot' where one hopes not to feel a stranger's hand while riding the Paris metro (or any underground transit system the world over). In classic creeper form the man next to me was violating my 'personal space,' as they call it in kindergarten. He assumed that the crowded train car would prevent his unsavory plot from jarring my consciousness. Little did he know, I have seen the '80s French film, Subway, and I know the dangers lurking below the streets.

Fancy Pants!

Apparently in France Halloween has been canceled. A principal at a grade school in Provence was put off by the concept of children sporting "fancy dress in the classroom," especially "when inspired by some ridiculous foreign novelty."

Luckily for me I spent Halloween at a soirée in Normandy in a picturesque town famous for its namesake cheese. In the courtly confines of a spooky Tudor mansion, I gallivanted with a group of Frenchies who were quite cozy with the prospect of getting decked out and disguised; there was a robed man in a Venetian mask dressed as a character from Eyes Wide Shut, Jack the Ripper, the inevitable sexpot sorcière, and a 'Mother Christmas' who drank a bit too much champagne and was less than merry the following morning.

No matter what the snobby traditional French school mistresses say, Halloween translates easily to foreign cultures: masks + cocktails + wigs = garden of earthly delights.

Reckless Abandon

The metro can be a lovely place to people watch. But then there is the inevitable moment when you see someone really attractive, and you try desperately to come up with an un-desperate approach to getting their number before they get off at the next stop. My friend has decided to keep it simple and tell cute girls, "Nice shoes!" He thinks it will be particularly charming and witty if the girls are wearing basic Converse sneakers. I told him that they will probably think he is a creeper with a foot fetish.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a lovely girl in the metro, because she tried to offer me her seat and had a luminous smile. We have yet to connect over coffee or a drink, but she texted me back, and these days, that's definitely something.

"I'd rather buy jewelry!"

A friend of mine decided to detox from a year of college drinking by spending his year after university living the life of a monk. He took a position as a history teacher at a secluded boarding school in the mountains of Switzerland, far from anything but lovely landscape and a lot of homemade cheese. He awakes at six o'clock every morning for a refreshing run in the alpine air with the basketball team, and the purity of his day only increases from there.

For a change of pace, he had a jaunt in Paris, and due to his modest monastic salary, he decided that CouchSurfing.org would be the most economical of accommodations. This website connects desperate travelers with random hosts all over the world who offer their couches for free, in the hopes of meeting new people and spreading good karma. Sounds officially creepy to me.

He ended up staying with a 35-year-old Parisian guy who did not have a couch. Apparently the bed was not big enough for the two of them, because in the dark of the night my friend awoke to an unpleasant surprise: his French host was treating him to an unsolicited 'Foot Job.' He spent the remainder of the night in his sleeping bag and returned to Switzerland with a renewed respect for Swiss cheese.

The Pampa Horizon

I was hoping to meet some nice, normal, eligible young gentlemen/gentlewomen, and I was told that the public library of the Centre Pompidou museum is a hot spot to pick up people in Paris. So I stood outside for twenty minutes in the queue, amazed that people actually stand in line for admittance into a library.

Once in the reading room, I seated myself across from the fetching young man whom I had noticed as the only hot prospect in the waiting line outside. He had an anguished-French-philosophy-student-trying-not-to-be-bourgeois look to him, and he was drinking a Coca Light, which made him even more bourgeois. But he never looked up from his 'serious literary work' to meet my glances.

Eventually I exited the library, brain-dead from dealing with the inefficient wireless connection. An overly solicitous security guard shooed me towards his younger co-worker in a deranged attempt to set us up on a date. When he realized that I was from The States, he asked, "Where? Texas? Oklahoma? Idaho?" I had never felt like less of a failure at being a discreetly camouflaged American in Paris.

Ivy League Sheep

The FIAC in Paris is just as any other gathering of the international art world—a time for blind self-importance and a proliferation of designer spectacles. The contemporary art scene tends to revolve around The Three P's: performance, posturing, and pretension. And what better place for that than Paris?

Adrift in a web of cigarette-butt-inspired conceptual art and neon light installations, I was drawn to a large photograph by Swiss artist, Olaf Breuning. It depicted a mass of naked people, sitting in a parking lot and suited up in cardboard boxes. A letter was written on each box, and as a group they formed the question: "Can someone tell us why we are here?"

The other FIAC spectators crowded into the exhibition space, pursed their lips, and feigned serious contemplation. I merely broke out into riotous birdlike laughter, because the photo distilled contemporary art to its essence: an industrial-chic space (the parking lot), an elite guest list (the nude people wearing boxes over their heads), and a message that is almost juvenile in its unabashed directness ("in life we are all just naked followers sitting motionless in an empty parking lot, hoping to find the meaning of it all.")

"You're a wicked girl."

Personal ads are always intriguing sources of entertainment. Some desperate men living in Paris have posted ads in the local bilingual magazine, and their cultural confusion is only exceeded by the vagueness of their romantic expectations:

"Single, 6 feet, sportsman, Architect-innovator, screenwriter; I'm looking for a bilingual woman: French, English, single pour séjours Hollywood (screenplays/contracts) et plus." He describes himself as "an innovator," as though it is a legitimate profession, and I am still unclear as to what "séjours Hollywood" denote. He attempts to alleviate any creepiness from the ad by using the French expression "et plus" instead of the utterly unwholesome English version, "and more ..."

Another fellow claims to be a "45-year-old CEO" who is good with all nationalities of women, although he speaks "abominable" English. He is looking to meet a young girl for "an installation project" in London from December. It is hard to discern if he is seeking a co-creator for a performance art piece, a flatmate, or a lover. Perhaps it's all of the above. Regardless, these two seem like classic mimbos en route to creeper-town.

Yes! Give her a call!

The second that World War II ended Ernest Hemingway (an ultimate pimp) barreled into Paris and headed straight to The Ritz. He entered the bar that would later bear his name and said to the bartender, "I'll have 50 martinis." He ended up staying at The Ritz for the following 3 weeks and basking in the glory of a newly free existence.

The tradition of expatriate writers in Paris is something exceptional: George Orwell took a pen-name because he didn't want to embarrass his well-to-do British family by being such a slovenly thing as a writer ... and a starving writer at that. Orwell ended up being forced to pawn his clothes at the Credit Municipale in the Marais to make money. He lived in a boarding house in Montparnasse that he deemed to be "Very dirty, but very home-like."

There is something to be said for being young, and free, and beholden to no one but yourself, especially when you're in a foreign land and everything seems more intriguing ...

The Boots of Sheitan

Train travel can be an ecstatic experience, even simply on short trips between city and countryside.

Gauche Things to do [especially as a middle-aged man] on a train:

1. Reading pornographic picture books.

2. Drinking alcohol (that you brought from home).

3. Watching The Lizzie McGuire Movie on your laptop. Even more gauche would be to watch the bootlegged version of the new Twilight movie.

4. Listening to music using low-grade headphones that reveal to the entire train car that your playlist includes one or more of the following: Miley Cyrus, Shakira, Lady Gaga.

5. Reading US Weekly or In Touch magazine to catch up on the latest reality television news stories.

"Are you German?"

When a Boston Brahmin moved to Paris for a four-year sojourn, due to her husband's business, she soon became intimately acquainted with a notable family in the French aristocracy, which is, I can assure you, an expansive entity — France has doled out titles of nobility in an excessively liberal manner, and every fifth person you meet in Paris seems to have a "de la" in front of their last name.

Years after settling back into humdrum puritanical life in Beacon Hill, the Bostonian lady returned to France to attend the wedding of a descendent of the aforementioned French aristocratic family. It had been a very long engagement, because the bride had been reluctant to commit to a British boy who, like most British boys of a certain breeding, "Didn't cuddle enough and played too much polo." The wedding took place at the modest château of the bride's family, and the groom's family wanted to contribute, so they paid for the champagne, and the 'tent,' which was more of a temporary 500,000-dollar orangerie. In short, it was a very un-New-Englandy affair indeed.

"Light On His Feet"

Today a semi-sinister man dropped a bundle of business cards on the street in front of me. I picked them up and tried to give them back to him, but he was walking too quickly. And then he dropped an orange Louis Vuitton card case. I picked that up too. And then I realized that he had recently mugged some elegant, unsuspecting Parisian woman and was merely discarding the non-valuables (the Louis Vuitton wallet was scratched and had a small hole in it, so was worthless for re-sale).

I recently heard a story about a French man en route to the airport in New York City to return home. He left a rolled-up poster in the taxi cab, and the cab driver went all the way back to the hotel and asked around for the address of "the French man." The selfless cabbie shipped the poster to France, without leaving his name or address, or asking for any money in return.

For every Wanker of the Week, there is a prince trotting close behind...

A Grab Bag

My friend arrived in Paris ready for a romance of epic proportions. Unlike the typical American who arrives in Paris and conscientiously avoids baguette and butter (out of an irrational fear of carbohydrates and cholesterol), she was ready to have her pain au chocolat, and eat it too.

She quickly met the perfect candidate to sweep her off her feet: a handsome, worldly celebrity, whom she knew during her childhood. He attempted to turn on the charm, invited her to his pimped-out penthouse overlooking the Bastille, and flooded her with tritely alluring text messages like, "You've certainly become a beautiful young woman..."

But it turns out that over the years he not only gleaned international fame but also got married and had a child. Luckily for this Wanker of the Week character, his wife is also a worldwide celebrity, so while she is on location in Texas taking care of their baby, he is free to be on location in France taking care of his own infantile issues.

Cut-Out Gliders That Really Fly

There is just something about young boys; I met a pure and beautiful one on a random Parisian street corner. At first I took him for a creeper and didn't want to remove my sunglasses to look him in the eyes. But then I realized he had a genuine interest in cinema, a flair for languages, and might even be the first prince I have come across in Paris.

On the other hand, I recently encountered a bon chic bon genre (sort of the French version of preppies) boy who dabbles in the world of art galleries, feigns academic studies, and spends his parents' money. He turned to my girlfriend (who is known for dating older men) and said something to the effect of: "It reassures me to know that when I'm old and wrinkled, there will still be stupid young girls like you who will want to date me ... and you'll be their mother." I think we've found our Wanker of the Week, and he's chock-full of spoiled-son wisdom.

Only White Marble

In Paris' famous Drouot district, art experts, collectors, crooks, and coutured ladies make for a delightful mix of characters. At a pre-auction lunch, I met the Parisian version of Hugh Hefner, an 80-year-old paintings expert who is famous for his African art collection and infamous for his affairs with women.

Over the years he has been married three times and had affairs with everyone from singer Edith Piaf, to French novelists, to the wives of Mexican presidents. Now he is settling down with a 24-year-old half-Senegali-half Cheyenne-Indian. He is obsessed by the stories of Colonel Custer and the American Civil War and claims that his new fiancee "has a beautiful scalp," which struck me as an odd choice of words.

In classic pimp form, he refused to finish eating his plate of codfish, declaring, "It has no taste!" and promptly ordered a clafouti instead.

A Zeus Complex

When living abroad, one frequently experiences lost in translation moments, especially in the world of dating. My friend is living in Moscow and recently received the following lovely bouquet of text messages from various disgruntled Eastern-European mimbo-creepers:

1. "Hey! How r u? I m planning to go to outside..club or sth..do u wanna join or do u wanna listen all night ur roommate's peeing..:) :p"

2. "U take1 minute to see some 1, 1day to know some 1, but, I take whole life to get 1 like u."

3. "hi, i needn't anything from u, you are a cheater, i haven't any problems with girls..u are not angel as u showed us.."

which was soon followed by:
4. "CHEATER"

Duties

Creepers abounded at the Saint-Tropez club, Les Caves du Roy, where dancing on my own proved to be a challenging experience.

Gauche Things for a [random] guy to do [to a girl] in a club:

1. Offering her Red Bull + something else, as she dances alone on an elevated platform.

2. Jumping up onto the elevated platform and attempting to dance with her.

3. Bumping butts with her as though you are playing laser tag at a 3rd grade birthday party.

4. Falling off the stage and breaking multiple wine glasses.

5. Following her to the bar.

6. Asking her: "Do you have cigars?"

7. Showing her your wedding ring, and introducing her to your friend, who is also wearing a wedding ring.

Lapis Lazuli

The famous film director Roman Polanski was recently arrested in Zurich for a rape case that he has been fleeing since 1977, when he lured a 13-year-old girl into Jack Nicholson's house under the guise of a photo shoot, serving her champagne and Quaaludes.

The topics of pedophilia, celebrity, film, and sexual assault, stir up a great deal of fervor and consternation in the United States and in France; while the French tend to support Polanski's release, "America's puritanical morals want him to be lynched," in the words of my Parisian friend.

The story of Polanski's life is a nightmarish epic: internment in a concentration camp where he witnessed the death of his mother, the brutal murder of his pregnant wife by the Manson Family, and the eruption of his own senseless cruelty and resulting fugitive lifestyle. Polanski is equipped with the ultimate survival skills and continues to create, in spite of the horrors of his own reality.

"with dyspeptic impatience"

Walking home through the semi-deserted streets of Montmartre, past the tourist trap of Sacré Coeur, I was aggressed by a drunk man. He left his posse of equally inebriated midnight creepers, came up very close to me and said repeatedly: "Comme tu es belle, comme tu es belle." I refused to make eye contact or utter a word to him, as I knew that he second he notice I had an accent, he would pin me as an American girl and the situation would inevitably deteriorate from there. American girls in Paris may seem to be glamorous princesses in flight from their own country, but in most cases, they are prime prey for wankers of the week who reek of body odor and bad whisky.

After I walked efficiently down the cobblestone street away from the creeper, his dialogue turned from "You are so beautiful" to "Comme tu es moche, comme tu es moche." Translation: "You are so ugly." I guess he wanted to test out a variety of pick-up lines that night.

Swimming Trunks

David Lynch designed the new windows at the famous French department store, Galeries Lafayette. "Machines, Abstraction and Women" is the theme of his 'artistic' installation, but it resembled a circus-inspired fun house targeted to mock the pretentious adult viewers who think that railroad tracks running through a model of a woman's body make for a controversial commentary on the state of heteronormative gender dynamics.

A throng of people gathered to ogle the marvelous David Lynch custom-designed vitrines. A too-tan Parisian woman in Christian Louboutin stilettos took pictures of the toy trains entering into the mouth of Lynch's screaming papier mâché woman.

When we crossed the street corner away from Galeries Lafayette, my friend and I noticed a man painting an enormous clown head on the sidewalk. That will probably be David Lynch's next big publicity gig/joke for the fashion world.

For Sure

During a weekend in Saint-Tropez I learned a new pejorative/womanizing term: the French word for 'gold-digger': les effeuilleuses ("feuille" referring to paper, as in money). The stereotypical "effeuilleuse" is a tall Russian 'model' sporting a diamanté-encrusted Blackberry and/or iPod with a monthly calling plan that is paid for by a man named Asadel (Arabic for 'most prosperous one') and/or Athamas (Greek for 'rich harvest').

'Les effeuilleuses' proliferate in the gleaming hotspots and nude beaches of the Côte d'Azur. A worldly French man of advanced years scorned each effeuilleuse that entered the bar. And soon after he made the following offhand comment: "In France there is a code—if a woman goes to dinner with a man, then it is expected that ... " It was not difficult to discern the rest of this old French aristocrat's sentence. But I felt like replying to him, "No—that's a common code in the head of wankers the world over ... it has nothing to do with France."

Sur La Terrasse

Just as I was thinking all about tiny Smart Cars in France and large SUVs in the states, I met a couple of typically American men at an Italian restaurant in Paris. They were admiring a Smart Car in the street and proclaiming vague statements of delight like, "The more I stay here, the more I come to love this place," as though Paris were a quaint summer camp on the coast of Maine.

When I talked to these ambiguously Texan gentlemen, I discovered that they were truly men of the world. They were airplane pilots. When I asked them where they lived, one responded, "I'm living in Guam actually." And when I asked him what that's like, he responded, "It's hot." They were delighted by "how healthy everyone is in Paris, and how everyone walks everywhere." More deep thoughts from our neighborhood airline pilots. Talk about mimbo material.

They hesitantly accepted to try the spacious driver's seat of my friend's Smart Car, but I have a feeling they will be happy to return to their Jeep Grand Cherokees.