Pimp of the Week: J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger is the literary pimp who brought us such universally appealing expressions as "crummy," "phony," and "mean bastards." If he had not created Holden Caulfield, adolescents the world over would feel far less justified in escaping high school to wander the streets of Manhattan, to pay for prostitutes (strictly for talking purposes), and to seek alcohol-soaked wisdom from their English teachers.

But after Salinger became the star of literary irony, he receded into the anti-social depths of rural New Hampshire. But one can only remain in total isolation for so long. At age 53 Salinger ended up writing a series of letters to a Yale freshman girl, Joyce Maynard, because her article in The New York Times Magazine.

Maynard gave up the Ivy League to live with Salinger in New Hampshire. The affair ended when she wanted children and he wanted his peace and quiet. At least she got 10 months of boundless literary advice and a lifetime of unmatched dinner table conversation.

"antiseptic perfumed cream"

My friend and I were recently pashmina-bartering in the splendor and squalor of Calcutta's New Market, where you can find stacks of eggs in extraordinary bulk, baskets of chickens, butchered animals, spices, and loads of Indian fabrics. After we purchased a rainbow of pashminas for about 2 dollars each, an overly solicitous man whispered in our ears about a secret store in the basement where we could buy shahtoosh -- a type of shawl woven from the finest neck-hairs of endangered Tibetan antelopes, making it the most coveted (and illegal) scarf in the world.

Our salesman claimed that his shahtoosh was "all natural" so it was not technically illegal. But during my entire time in India I never saw a single policeman (only a few traffic directors in uniform), so I don't think the salesman was too concerned about legal issues.

He was so determined to sell us his shahtoosh that he started recounting stories of his childhood as an orphan and being raised by Mother Theresa. Apparently all his shahtoosh profits go to "the children." He and his troop of associates swarmed around us for almost an hour, offering us glasses of sweet chai and thrusting so many scarves, tablecloths, leather jackets, and jewels in our faces that we left the New Market feeling dazed and endeared by these charmingly brazen salesmen.

Dressed For Dinner

I was wandering the crowded banana-stand-filled market streets of Puri, India, when I turned onto an alleyway to admire a lovely broken-down air conditioning unit and a typical vendor selling Lay's masala-flavored potato chips, chewing tobacco spices, stacks of cashew nuts, and other essentials. I paused to snap a photograph of an old poster for a Hindi movie whose tagline was "THE PLEASING TOUCH!"

Suddenly a young man popped out at me and said, "3 rupees and I look at you." He proceeded to undress his unique lower-body sarong ensemble. And that was my cue to return to my vehicle. He was offering me the equivalent of 6 cents to look at me as he fondled himself. He was a creeper to be sure, but somehow the interaction was less threatening than the Western World equivalent -- especially since it was a colorful sarong being undone instead of a zipper.

Pimp of the Week: Graydon Carter

Over the sea of Botoxed brows and candy-coiffed diners at a posh restaurant, I spotted the billowing plumage of none other than Graydon Carter. The Vanity Fair editor-in-chief exudes laid-back New England suavity, even though he is a political, literary, and cultural king of Manhattan. He also dabbles in restaurateurism and co-owns New York's cozy-clubby celebrity dining spot, the Waverly Inn, along with Midtown's old school Monkey Bar.

As Carter was exiting the restaurant, I dashed up to him like the desperate young pseudo-writer that I am and handed him my email address on a scrap of paper. All I could muster up to say was, "I'm a huge fan -- I'm a starving writer," but then I corrected myself, "Well, clearly I'm not quite starving, but you know..." I told him about the unpublished novel I wrote and let him go on his way. You never know when a humiliating experience will spin into gold. Perhaps Graydon Carter will be my Rumpelstiltskin.

An Uncanny Resemblance

The best thing about being a tourist is ogling other tourists and deducing their nationalities. In a bar with a distant view of the Taj Mahal, I found myself culturally confused: the American girl, in India, with a French man, at a British-colonialist-style resort, observing two Italian women sipping cocktails (or perhaps they were Spanish, or Greek ... it was hard to discern at first).

They were both well-dressed, well coiffed, dripping in designers, young, brunette, and pretty. One of them wore a threateningly large emerald ring, had a haughty look on her face, and sipped a mimosa. The other girl wore a headband embellished with a satin bow and had a sweet smile. She opted out of her friend's prissy champagne cocktail and ordered various ingredients from the bartender to create an odd concoction of tomato juice, beer, Tabasco sauce, celery salt, and Worcestershire sauce. Talk about gauche. We finally asked her about her custom drink and discovered that they are from Mexico. And when I saw the Worcestershire sauce, I was about to guess Great Britain.

But how much can you really tell about a person from what they drink? In Chile, Argentina, and India, I noticed ads for Johnnie Walker everywhere. I guess globalization turns international people watching into true detective work.

"fortune hunter!"

Heidi Montag is the 23-year-old reality television celebrity who went from sweet and natural Colorado girl to botched and butchered Los Angeles pop star ... all in a matter of minutes. She recently underwent 10 different plastic surgery procedures in a day, saying that she wanted to become the "perfect" version of herself.

She's always indicated signs of derangement: she married a sociopathic mimbo-creeper, Spencer Pratt, and the two of them were baptized in the jungle by a born-again Christian minister (a.k.a. the youngest Baldwin brother) on public television. After they were absolved of their sinful hard-partying lifestyle, Spencer and Heidi (a.k.a. "Speidi") decided to make a series of music videos featuring Heidi's enlarged breasts on the beach. Well, now her lips (and cheeks, and eyebrow arches, and butt) will be bigger too. And her thighs (and ears, and nose, and chin, and neck) will be smaller.

She might be a talentless celebrity past the brink of sanity, but in a culture saturated by image obsession and body perfectionism, Heidi Montag might also be a dreadful alarm call for a future lived in plastic.

"a reformed rake"

The lovely indie-chic romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer, tells the story of a male 20-something phenomenon: the guy who is desperate to settle down to one woman and only one woman. He is the prince in this modern Los Angeles anti-fairy-tale, instead of the emotionally unavailable wanker so prevalent in popular films and everyday life. Unfortunately, the boy falls for the female twenty-something phenomenon: the girl who is desperate to remain "casual" and never commit to one guy. She is the princess in flight.

The disarmingly disgruntled leading man realizes that he is not the prince to his princess. Romantic relationships are so often littered with this imbalance of expectations -- one person wants to have a baby, and the other person just wants to go to happy hour at a karaoke bar. You could call it "bad timing." But for the ones who want to have a baby, it's more like an extended mourning period of bleak wandering in streets that are haunted by the girl who liked to sing karaoke.

40 Thieves & An Engagement!

On a recent trip to Venice, my sister and I found ourselves eating one of the most delicious meals of our lives at Osteria Ai 40 Ladroni, or The Forty Thieves. It is an exceptional restaurant not only for its to-die-for squid ink pasta dish but also for the fact that it's where my sister got married.

There was a charming and virile-looking Italian waiter serving us. And my sister is famous for her Strega-Nona-like love of pasta, so she turned to me midway through the meal and said, "This waiter is cute, right? And he could serve me the most delicious homemade pasta, and he lives in Venice, a beautiful city." Since her horoscope had recently informed her that she would meet the love of her life that day, one thing led to another ... and before we knew it, Maurizio (as he was called) was announcing to the packed room of Italian families: "I present to you my wife!" Everyone was clapping and laughing and drinking limoncello.

Enough with the emotionally unavailable men -- here's to Italian princes bearing plates of pasta and seafood delicacies. Though Maurizio doesn't have an email address, he promised to do some email writing to my sister by way of the restaurant's office. After all, unfulfilled love affairs are usually more romantic.

Pimp of the Week: François Pinault

In terms of billionaires in the world, François Pinault is apparently around number 39. He is the ultimate Frenchman of luxury, owning Gucci, Christie's auction house, the Vail Ski Resort, and that sort of modest NGO-based work. But the best thing about this capitalist pimp is that he bought a beautiful old customs building and a marble palace on Venice's Grand Canal, and then he turned them into museums for his extraordinary contemporary art collection: the Punta Della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi.

His son, François-Henri Pinault, is married to Hollywood hot actress Salma Hayek. In fact, they got married twice -- first in Paris and then in Venice. Just for good measure. There are some things money can't buy (like marital bliss), but there are other things (like a Venetian-masquerade wedding reception, or a Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation), where a lot of money can't hurt.

"an ungarnished colonial"

The excessively civilized Caffe Florian, overlooking the Plaza San Marco, is the Venetian equivalent to the eternally posh Café de Flore on Paris' Left Bank: there are waiters in white jackets and it is generally inadmissible to look or act like a tourist (though tourists inevitably abound).

Gauche Things to do in a Chic (Elitist) European Café:

1. Bringing a Starbuck's thermos and telling your waiter, "Fill it up!"

2. Wearing sweatpants, or any garment involving an elastic band.

3. Taking a picture of anything, especially your waiter's head as he is serving you.

4. Informing other diners that you find the décor a bit outdated -- and that you think the IHOP on Route 1 has a much more contemporary flair.

5. While en route to the WC, pilfering large quantities of wrapped house chocolates (customarily served as an accompaniment to the espresso drinks).

6. Exclaiming in horror, "10 Euros for a Coke!"

"are you enfianced?"

Nestled underneath the arcades of the Place Des Vosges, I debriefed on my underwhelming impression of Berlin with a couple of true Parisians. The zany stranger seated at the neighboring table overheard my less than complimentary comments about Berlin, and we delved into a discussion of urban gentrification (and the irritating characters who accompany it). There are the bobos in Paris's 17th arrondissement ("Bobo" is a term for Frenchies who are simultaneously "bourgeois" and "bohemian"); there are the yuppies in Manhattan's Murray Hill; there are the hipsters in Brooklyn's Williamsburg.

But nowadays there is something more offensive than yuppies or hipsters: the yipster. Yuppie + Hipster = Yipster. Yipsters tend to reside post-college on the Upper East Side (where they live rent-free in apartments formerly occupied by their grandmothers). But the yipster quickly accumulates enough wealth to move to Williamsburg, where they stock their kitchens with Whole Foods groceries and frequent the gym in their full service river-view buildings.

The yipster drinks Red Stripe beers out of the bottle at the local backyard bar venue on Friday nights. The yipster probably went to Harvard but prefers to hang out on weekends with up-and-coming artists who went to RISD. I suppose I am similar to a yipster, except that yipsters usually have real jobs so that they can eventually buy a house in Westchester County, forget the "grunge" of Brooklyn, and buy the paintings of their former 'artist friends' who gain credibility from Christie's contemporary art auction.

Wanker of the Week: Apicius Restaurant Encounter

While dining on frogs' legs at Apicius Restaurant, one of the most elegant and hidden-away culinary delights in Paris, a mysterious man caught my eye. He seemed bored at his table of stuffy, well-coiffed, Chanel-dipped elderly relatives. After an hour of exchanging glances, I made an exit for the ladies' room -- he brushed past me in the hallway and I slipped a piece of paper into his hand. It was a perfectly timed encounter between two creepers.

Moments later we were texting, and a few days later we were doing the standard email writing procedure: he is a banker, his family has a house in Paris, he thinks New York is a wonderful city, he is not one of those 'emotionally unavailable men,' he is enamored of my long hair, and OH, one more thing -- casually, at the end of the email he mentioned:

"What else ???? I'm married (no point in hiding that !!)."

So maybe I didn't find true love at Apicius, but I certainly found a Wanker of the Week (no point in hiding that !!), and the chocolate soufflé was delicious.

Pimp of the Week: Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton is a total pimp. He was a seminal fashion photographer in the 1970s. I visited the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and was spellbound by Newton's pictures -- always erotically charged, slightly deranged, subversive, and sinister in a way that exposed the fallacy of the luxe lifestyle.

His handwritten letters to various fashion editors are particularly amusing. He once wrote to Anna Wintour, "I love high riders like Gary Cooper used to wear." And he tended to sign his letters with: "From the old naughty boy!"

Newton once said about his preference of models, "Please make sure you get a gal with some muscle and meat on her -- none of those starved females!! Horrible matchstick women." He knew that the whole heroin/anorexic-chic look was useless in artistic photography, and useless in general.

Restaurant Review: Cookies Cream in Berlin

Berlin is the new European hotspot for starving artists to commune, collaborate, and get crunk. But there is something so American about the post-Communist commercial build-up that makes Berlin look like Denver, Colorado. I searched high and low for its vibrant, seething underbelly of grittiness and avant-garde art.

Even though I was too tired to engage in Berlin's raging underground nightlife, I was able to enjoy its hidden-away culinary delights. One highbrow vegetarian restaurant, Cookies Cream, is concealed down an alleyway, amidst dumpsters and abandoned chandeliers. I had to go through the back door of the popular nightclub, Cookies, walk through the deserted coatroom, and mount the stairs to finally arrive at the oasis of non-carnivorous delights. The experience called to mind Manhattan's chic hot dog and cocktail joint du jour, PDT (Please Don't Tell), which can only be accessed through a phone booth inside the dive hot dog shop next door.

But at Cookies Cream in Berlin I feasted on vegetarian marvels such as "Elder pear barley with cream of pea and fennel salad," "Potato-Leek-Gratin with beetroot and marsalla foam," and I swear it was delicious (even if compared with meat-eaters' food). And dessert was delicious: caramelized sour cream tart with peanut ice cream (divine) and gingerbread mousse with marinated blackberries. Plus, there was a lesbian-gay night at the club downstairs, so the ambiance was filled with the cozy homosexual vibes that give such good energy.

Sex & Surrealism at Centre Pompidou

Centre Pompidou's recent exhibition on Surrealism, La Subversion des Images, is a glamorously curated look into the sexy 1920s art world of understanding dreams and rejecting bourgeois rationalism.

The exhibition included a secluded black chamber where viewers could watch a "sexually explicit" film by Man Ray entitled "Cinematic Experiment: Two Women." Once inside, I witnessed some vintage hardcore lesbian strap-on pornography. But because the Pompidou Center is a very French museum (and not at all Puritanical in nature), there was only a measly warning sign: "The following film may offend sensitive children."

The intersection of pornography and high art has such a rich history that it is difficult to imagine one without the other. What would the Louvre Museum have to display if not for the idealized body of a naked woman?

Marzipan Mustache

When five French bachelors cohabit in a grand Parisian apartment, New Year's Eve is bound to be a debaucherous affair. I spent my first hours of 2010 in the company of a crowd of horny, sweaty, semi-elegant young Parisians (and a smattering of confused Americans who were passing through town). The dance floor was throbbing, the champagne was flowing, the silly string was spraying, and the handsome French boys were ogling each Parisian girl wearing a little black cocktail dress that entered their line of sight.

New Year's Eve intensifies the creeper-quality in everyone because of the societal pressure to ring in the New Year with your perfect love match (or else your next 365 days will be cursed with lonely nights of watching sitcoms stored on your TV, or learning how to cook for one).

In the hazy inaugural moments of 2010 a particularly convincing creeper caught my eye, and he doled out a series of pick-up lines, each one weaker than the last -- though my personal favorite was his mention of taking me shopping for bridal gowns in the coming weeks. He topped if off when he declared, "If you don't sleep with me tonight, then tomorrow you will regret it!" I was convinced that the contrary was true. It's funny how men and women can have such different impressions of the urgency of a one-night stand.