Film Review: Valentine's Day

The new romantic comedy, Valentine's Day, is a rompish series of vignettes chock full of amusing stereotypes and clichés. Within the first ten minutes you get a glimpse of the bare legs and asses of most of Hollywood's hot actresses, but my personal favorite was the young starlet and country singer, Taylor Swift, playing the ditzy blonde high schooler who just can't get enough of her hunky boyfriend and the giant white teddy bear he gives her for Valentine's Day.

There is an ultimate scene of romantic revenge, in which the sweet girl-next-door humiliates her cheating wanker boyfriend in front of his wife during their fancy Valentine's dinner. And perhaps the most cinematic incident of the film involves an 18-year-old boy in the nude, his guitar, and his girlfriend's mother, but I'll leave the rest to your wild imagination. I also enjoyed that they cast funny boy Ashton Kutcher as a florist.

The moral is: romance can be charming, but love is messy -- love is torturesome ... and you're lucky to find someone honest who is enjoyable to be around for more than seven seconds, so grab on tight (and pray that their mother doesn't walk in on you naked).

Restaurant Review: Lasserre Paris

I bet the snobbiest restaurant in Paris was booked to the max with Russian tourists for Valentine's Day. Restaurant Lasserre, just off Avenue Montaigne and near the Grand Palais, serves exceedingly expensive French Haute Cuisine involving foie gras, cepe mushrooms, things infused with truffles, and the requisite touch of caviar.

But the most exciting dish (in my adolescent sweet tooth's opinion) is the "Vacherin aux fruits exotiques" -- translation: "meringue cake filled with exotic fruits." Or you can have one of the adorable elderly male waiters wheel over an elegant silver cart and prepare you a Crêpes Suzette for two people.

As if the whole scene weren't nauseatingly Valentine's Day enough, the ceiling of the dining room literally opens up to reveal the beautiful night sky above you. I guess the words of Martha Stewart come to mind when I think of institutionalized displays of romance: it's a good thing. But I personally spent Valentine's Day with my two girlfriends, burning incense, cursing off men, and eating Italian amaretto cakes. But I'm sure Martha would say, "That's a good thing too."

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.

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.

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.

A Handsome Catalogue!

I found a wayward Mother's Day card soaked and dirty on the streets of New Haven, under one of the flowering trees next to an elaborate wrought iron gate. I am not sure if the card ever made it to the mother, or if it merely fell out of the son's pocket en route to the nearby post office. The front cover had an illustration of a book on it: "Mother Knows Best: The critically acclaimed best-seller." And then there was the boy's personal heartfelt message:

To the author of many critically acclaimed best sellers,
Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for all your wisdom. This mother's day is especially meaningful mostly because we had such a great mother-son bonding/quality time :) Thank you for everything, especially for supporting me through the amazing and challenging year!
Love,

Jack

I always thought of parents as being more like crutches for when you have a sprained foot and less like books for when you are in need of "wisdom." We go to our mothers kicking and screaming, and rarely seek them out when we are at our mature contemplative intellectual best. But the son's card was a soggy, wrinkled mess in the street. And it's the thought that counts.

A Man Named Gerald

"Spring Fling." Such telling words? During the sultry early-summer day I contemplated the issue of virginity. If you are a girl about to graduate from university, and you have not had that first 'struggle between the sheets' with a mimbo, wanker, pimp, or ever-elusive prince, then should you keep waiting? Should you hold out for the ideal romantic scenario to emerge? Or should you merely turn to a guy friend, or the local man at the wine shop, and move from virginity to...well, post-virginity?

"To lose one's virginity" has always struck me as a problematic expression. What is lost? For me, the only thing that was lost when I lost my virginity was the battery on my boyfriend's parents' Volvo. There is an irrational sense that this event is a "rite of passage." But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a Bat Mitzvah is just an awkward thirteen-year-old girl receiving too many over-priced Tiffany heart tag necklaces. And sometimes even Volvos run out of batteries.

Fuzzy Bunny Poodle Pumpkin

Easter Sunday is gloomy. Especially all the eggs everywhere. It reminds me of theories on the evolution of human sexuality, and the way that a woman's finite reserve of eggs can mark her behaviors in love and marriage. It's the old story: given that men seem to have an endless supply of sperm, each of their mates does not symbolize a tremendous investment in the grand scheme of their reproductive banking. For women, it is a different story. And that story might even last nine months long.

Or maybe the whole evolution and human sexuality connection is archaic. We have cell phones, Twitter, and Match.com nowadays. Nature does not even factor into it. A woman's apparently innate 'selectiveness' is so confused that she will not just date one, but two, Wanker of the Week. And a mimbo as well. And maybe even a pimp, just to round out the experience. Moral of this Easter Sunday story: men and women are doomed—eggs, no eggs, long-term love, short-term affair, internet dating, happenstance rendezvous, old flame, new email love letter correspondent. Take a deep breath and maybe a walk in the woods.

Repair Black Watch/Wallflower

I was fortunate enough to partake in the festivities of Passover with a good old non-denominational New Haven Seder that devolved very quickly into flourless chocolate cake. I love this wheat-less and unleavened thing...

Gauche Things to do while Wine-Shopping:

1. Upon entering the store, dashing straight over to the impromptu wine tasting event without hesitation.

2. Asking the person attending you, "Does this Chambord come in a family size?"

3. Buying those mini champagne bottles and then asking the cashier, "Do you sell extra-long straws?"

4. Exclaiming things like: "This bottle looks smaller than this one," or, "This one just doesn't have a high enough alcohol content for my taste."

5. Ogling vodka bottles based on the decorative aesthetic of their labels. Then choosing the one that has a picture of a lemon on it, because it reminds you of the Serge Gainsbourg song. (This is not so much gauche as just plain deranged.)

6. When asked to present your ID, handing the cashier your Pennsylvania driver's license and then saying, "OH wait, that's the wrong one... here you go." And then pulling out your other ID (the one from Mississippi).

7. Buying Baileys.

Good on Paper

My Valentine is incredibly handsome, tall, masculine, devilishly intelligent, with a touch of sardonic wit about him. Thanks to his decidedly pimp status, he manages to wear brown suede slippers at all hours of the day, in all seasons, and still look impeccable.

Late tonight I am taking him to dinner at my favorite restaurant, and then on to the Anchor Bar, a New Haven classic (with a gold neon anchor-shaped sign and a changing window display that incorporates various plastic dolls—in short, very David Lynch).

My Valentine and I share just about everything, or at least all the important stuff: a love of Paris, a fondness for brief trips to Cambodia, a taste for queer theory and the "problematic male gaze," and a fascination with older men with big art collections.

Jealous?

An Eye Patch

"On the eve of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday," tonight's Yale Center for British Art keynote lecture was accompanied by wine, sausage tartlets, and inordinately opportune people-watching: elderly women in fur, young men in lime green ponchos, tweeds and plaids mixed in combinations both horrifying and delightful, and the usual rarefied debauchery of art world academia.

With Darwin's theories on evolution always pertinent to my own observations of human sexuality, and with Valentine's Day looming, here are some of the more egregious post-breakup mating rituals.

Gauche Things to do to an Ex:

1. After months apart, emailing your ex to suggest a friendly drink. Then, after he/she refuses, sending the following email response: "No problem. Just a bit of leftover curiosity." Classic wanker behavior.

2. G-chatting your ex, or contacting them via any form of simultaneous cyberspace messaging. If you have something specific to say, express it in a hand-written letter...you will inevitably change your mind about sending it, due to the letter's inappropriately aggressive or spiteful tone. You'll be grateful to have not humiliated yourself by way of as lowly a form of communication as Gchat.

3. Calling your ex in the middle of the night, especially with the idea of initiating phone sex. Need I say more?

Meet Me at the Tower.

Valentine's Day is approaching, a reality that is almost as undesirable as the mid-winter weather. In an attempt to distract myself, I hosted a gathering of friends in my charming dorm room overlooking the glowing Harkness Tower and a snow-covered Cross Campus. A crew of underclassmen boys showed up, most of them involved in theatre, and all of them on the verge of coming out of the closet. At Yale, we refer to the abrupt transition from straight-to-gay as "The Sophomore Surprise."

One of my many romantic shortcomings has been falling in love with gay men. They tend to be clean, witty, well-dressed, and, as my waiter described the venison stew last night, "lean and fun." I even hosted the dorm room fête in celebration of my favorite gay boy's recent admittance to graduate school in London. Accordingly, I bought him a box of Cadbury Fingers, the classic U.K. chocolate biscuits that are so dreadfully named. I suppose I should attend "Graduate Student Speed Dating" night, or go to the biweekly booze-and-romp fests at the sticky-floored, aptly named Toad's of New Haven. I suppose I'm not making great strides towards a happy Valentine's Day by staying in my dorm room with a box of Fingers and a crowd of adorable gay guys.

You're a Lovely CV

I recently attended the MIT European Career Fair to interview for a position at a big international insurance company. I was seduced into it by the following facts:

a. They read my résumé (with its use of dreadfully uncorporate phrases like "one act plays," "au pair," "beauty assistant," "Teen Vogue")... and they were still interested in interviewing me.

b. Their company is based in Switzerland. That means: Swiss men strolling on the banks of lakes, ski outfits that are elegant instead of awkwardly puffy, and a general standard of cleanliness that makes France seem almost barbaric in comparison.

I dressed for the interview in the only things I could find that were remotely appropriate: a pair of fake reading glasses, a crisp white oxford button down, and an oversized beige Tod's shoulder bag. I looked comedic.

My interviewer said, as he glanced at my 'artful' CV: "So it looks like you've done all the fun stuff, and now you're looking to get serious." I don't know what he's referring to in terms of "fun stuff," as I am currently buried under a pile of art history articles with titles like "The Panoramic Landscape of Human Suffering" and "Fall of Icarus: Ovid or Solomon?"

Maybe I am indeed "looking to get serious." Or, maybe I'm just looking to become a mastermind performance artist disguised as a lesbian insurance CEO. Here's hoping.

The above picture is of the most campy-erotic corkscrew opener in history. Or maybe it's just designed for Easter Sunday or something.

4:18 in the Morning

Famous German filmmaker Werner Herzog once said, "It's not self-destructive to jump into a cactus...it's just having a little fun."

I feel as though no matter the volume of interesting and productive work in my life, no matter the number of encounters with exciting people, no matter the proliferation of beautiful settings, at the end of the day, if you don’t have that one special thing that makes you feel good in a bad way, it can all seem useless. For some people it’s alcohol. For some people it’s drugs. For some people it’s degrading or wonky sexual perversions. For some people it’s eating disorders. For some people it’s compulsive spending. For some people it’s masochism. For some people it’s plastic surgery. The list goes on.

Maybe February is giving me this resigned feeling about life. February, with its Valentines, it's unforeseen snow storms, and it's dark late-night phone calls. I should tell whomever is reading this blog: don't resort to "good in a bad way" behaviors, stay strong, buy a sunlamp to stave off midwinter depression, take up a creative hobby, make a film, write in a journal, but I'm not a middle school teacher (yet), and sometimes it's okay to embrace the darkness.

Get Tested

The only relief that comes with New Year's Eve is that it marks the end of the frustrating string of holidays. The season from mid-November through January 1st reinforces the conventional and exhausting notion that a person should be a part of an intact family unit and a romantic couple. New Year's Eve is especially at fault when it comes to this institutionalized feeling of inadequacy that I haven't found The One, or at least The One to kiss me when the annual clock turns.

Yesterday my sister and I decided to make a positive change away from convention. First, we went to Project Trust, a free clinic in Boston, and got OraQuick Advance rapid HIV tests. Within twenty minutes we had some refreshing news to ring in 2009. To celebrate, we prepared a Spanish tapas feast, drank champagne and sangria, and watched Almodóvar's exquisitely meta film of transvestites-and-priests-and-familial betrayal, Bad Education. As the New Year approached, we watched Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together. After Almodóvar's campily fantastical tableaux of drag queens and Wong Kar-wai's dreamy photographic images of Chinese gay men in Buenos Aires, the approach of midnight recessed into the background.

We fell asleep around 11:15, having had just enough to drink to make us sleep like babies for twelve hours (two glasses). No offensive parties cluttered with uninteresting guests, no big crowds or foolish drunks, and no distracting boyfriends or wankers of the week--only the sweet scent of coriander and fennel prawns, and the lovely homoeroticism of world cinema. Jealous?

(The above photo is of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum courtyard, all dressed up for the holidays.)

Surprise! This is what we look like this year!

On a trip to the picturesque and somewhat deserted Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, I fell in love with a six-year-old boy, the little cousin of my French Goddess. He spent ten minutes eating his soft-boiled egg from the rooster-shaped egg stand that his older sister had hand-painted. After cracking and laboriously picking away at the top of the egg shell (with my assistance), he dunked his delicately buttered baguette pieces, into the orange center of the egg and scooped out the contents little by little. Gleeful at his success in cleaning out the egg shell, he presented it to his mother. Most American children miss out on this elaborate procedure typical of European households.

I arrived back to New England from Paris to find a stack of Waspy holiday cards in my mother's kitchen. The tradition of circulating family Christmas cards always manages to bring out a vanity and tackiness in people that goes otherwise undetected throughout the rest of the year. Below is a sampling from the most egregious ones.

Gauche Things To Do In Your Christmas Cards:

1. Covering the front of the card with collage-style cutouts of the heads of your family members, the largest one being the newest born baby. This gives the card a startling high-school-year-book effect and makes the people appear disembodied.

2. Commencing the inside letter with the words, "What an exciting year for the ____s, as you see." If the offensive cover (and interior) collage of your family and a giant looming baby head is evidence of your "exciting year," I'd rather not read onwards.

3. Using any of the following terms in the body of the letter: Wall Street, nuptials, our newest addition, University of _____, skeet shooting, summer renting, empty nesters, start up company, Alpha Chi Ro, VP, bathroom renovations, tennis, golf carts, family clambake, gorgeous bridesmaid, detached retina, strategic real estate investment. Note: all of the previous terms were direct quotations from this year's batch.

4. Formatting the letter as an "Alphabet Soup" and mentioning each "significant" event at least three times so as to come up with twenty-six sentences.

Wasps have a special dialect sometimes incomprehensible to the untrained ear. The penchant for using the word "golden" as a noun (especially in describing the health, arrival, or death of your retrievers), and the overuse of the word "summer" as a verb, are just two fine examples of this tradition. I miss France. I wonder if they do this sort of thing over there.

Out and About

Sipping champagne and eating macaroons at Hotel Fouquet's off of the Champs-Élysées was followed by dancing at the grungy-but-cool art-and-film-world boîte, Le Baron. The second storey terrace of Fouquet's was dolled up for Christmas and had a revolving light installation reminiscent of Las Vegas. Parisian Christmas decorations are surprisingly tacky and American. There is an excessive volume of blinking twinkle lights that drip from every window of the Crillon Hotel in the middle of Place de la Concorde. At the entrance to The Ritz there are life-sized reindeer with creepily robotic bobbing heads.

After a big night out, I woke up to my French Goddess home from morning shopping, her hands full with fresh goodies for a crazy French breakfast: a loaf of beautiful seeded bio (organic) bread, perfectly prepared eggs, slices of ripe avocado, plump dried figs that were juicier than I thought possible, clementines and fisalis (small tart fruits inside delicate brown leaves that look like round orange hearts enclosed in birds' wings), and, last but not least, two sea urchins (uni: a Japanese delicacy I had never tasted before).

My friend bought the sea urchins (pictured above) from her corner fish monger. He has a crush on her and told her excitedly that the sea urchins came to him fresh from the shores of Brittany. Their taste was far too strong for me, especially before having my morning coffee, but I enjoyed them immensely as decorative accents to our colorful breakfast table. In The States I usually have a bowl of cereal.

Departure

I am leaving for Paris tonight. In French the word for flight is the same as the word for escape. The expression "to take flight" is the same as "to flee." The word is feminine. I wonder if women take to hopping on planes and relocating for karmic realignment more frequently than men do. A former Wanker of the Week told me that he attempted to lift his spirits by taking a last-minute trip to L.A. for the weekend. Holiday season depression is a rampant problem often left as an unspoken malady. When cheer is institutionalized, drear can be closer than one thinks, and there is nothing more satisfying than the moment of takeoff.

In the above photo I am running through the Sol LeWitt exhibition at Mass MoCA.

Red All Over

The holidays fill me with cheer at the fact that the sooner they approach, the sooner they are over, and the sooner we can get on with a brand new unsullied year.

All I Want For Christmas:

1. A literary agent for my recently drafted novel (well, preferably a book deal from an established publishing house, but I'm not one to ask for things I can't get).

2. A kitty cat (to keep illegally in my new dorm room starting in January--I can fashion her as one of my childhood American Girl Dolls. When the college dean knocks on my door to inquire about the proliferation of cat sounds and fur balls wafting from my room, he'll think she's just a regular old Kirsten doll dressed up as the youngest virgin with candles on her head for that Swedish holiday, Santa Lucia.

3. A non Wanker of the Week male to give me a kiss underneath the mistletoe.

Notice that I have ordered things from most likely to receive, to least likely to receive. A cat is unrealistic and out of the question, as I am not sure of my life plans after April 28th (the last day of my senior spring classes). For all I know, my Carney Sandoe application won't pan out as hoped, and I'll be uprooted to Minnesota to teach runny-nosed preschoolers. Yes, cats can travel on planes, and certainly ones dressed as hot Swedish virgins, but I still think a cat is out of the question, especially since my college dean reads this blog.

That's what the holidays are all about: unfulfilled expectations. Since my picturesque early years in New England, the only thing in my holiday season that's been merry, jolly, happy, red, glittery, and shiny all over was an Elton John album, The Red Piano.

So please please someone alert me to a literary agent who is interested in dark chick literature that is decidedly mistletoe-free.

The above Christmas card is of my sister and me at Edith Wharton's house channeling Gilbert & George.