Pimp of the Week: Kathryn Bigelow Rocks It

I was delighted and dismayed to realize that Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman in history to win the Oscar for best director. 2010 strikes me as a late date to start recognizing the creative artistry of women in cinema, but such is life.

Kathryn Bigelow strikes me as a person with her head on straight. She makes ballsy action films, even in Jordan, and she doesn't preach about being a "feminist filmmaker." Maybe that's why she was the first woman director to be recognized by The Academy.

Never mind that she was married to a famous Hollywood director and womanizer, because Bigelow is just a woman with a talent for making movies, and she doesn't focus on feminine issues or designer shoe brands. But why is it so illegitimate/un-Oscar-worthy to make movies about 'female trouble'? A war movie about men deactivating bombs is considered serious, but a film about a divorced woman raising her daughter is labeled "melodramatic." Maybe next year a female director will win for making a movie about a girl who is fired from her day job when her boss finds out she is pregnant, forcing her to sell cupcakes door-to-door in order to save enough money to find true love. Wait--that cliché just got horribly confused.

Pimp of the Week: Luca Bassani Antivari

In the Marilyn Monroe classic, Some Like It Hot, there were a few of my favorite things: train travel, cross-dressing, and big boats. But these days, not even a classic yacht off the coast of Florida satisfies the appetite of a high roller. And that's why the international yacht man du jour, Luca Bassani Antivari, has teamed up with Hermès fashion house to create a boat that is so big it's actually an island.

Luca Bassani Antivari is the president of the famous Monaco-based yacht company, Wally, and he unveiled his futuristic creation at the Abu Dhabi yacht show. Antivari says, "Everybody's dream is to live on an island, in complete freedom, without constraint." It sounds like the attitude of a pimp who likes to live outside the law and maybe even abduct some willing captives.

"shabby people"

While skiing in the French Alpine resort town of Val-d'Isère, I encountered many a Slim Aarons situation. From the lounge chairs at the foot of the slopes, to the Frenchies drinking mid-afternoon red wine in those lounge chairs, it was a surreally elegant ski experience.

From my early years, I recall awkward moments at ski school involving a combination ski suit with suspenders and a desperate need to go pee while riding on the chair lift. I always wanted to become that girl in the snow bunny outfit like some Bavarian ice princess at her chalet in Gstaad sipping slope-side champagne and wearing furry boots that look like animals.

This time around, my sartorial choices were more 1970s-pimp than 1980s snow princess. But no matter what sort of Italian magenta jumpsuit or rabbit fur chapka hat you wear, the awkward mountaintop experiences of youth still abound. Ski boots inevitably make you walk like you have a load in your pants, and falling on your ass is practically a requirement.

The Bay of Bengal

Jet setting is the best, especially if it is on the arm of a dashing man or woman who has piles of money to spend on plane tickets and lavish hotel suites. In theory. In the movies, that is.

A flight attendant friend of mine makes a lifestyle out of meeting men in the first class cabin. She's seen most of the globe and has more stories of luxury travel at the top than Hugh Hefner, or Condoleezza Rice.

She was recently invited for a romantic last-minute trip from Barcelona to New York. Unfortunately, when she arrived to the Manhattan hotel room of her gentleman friend, she picked up his cell phone and found that he had sent the same text message invitation to a multitude of women. It was an international chain text message booty call, and she was the unlucky one who responded. This time the Wanker of the Week met a literal Princess in Flight.

The Pedagogue

There is a stereotype about The French that they only like to travel so that they can complain about how inferior every country is to France. But I recently read that some French travelers are searching for a genuinely thrilling experience in their next vacation: they are paying a minimum of $1,200 to Ultime Réalité for someone to kidnap and imprison them for four hours.

If they are true high rollers, then they'll opt for a package that is more expensive and custom-designed to their mental histories (and most likely, mental illnesses, considering that they are paying to be tied up, gagged, and carted away). It makes me think of Michael Douglas in the classic psychological thriller of capitalist malaise, The Game. The only birthday gift his brother can think to get him is the most elaborate "abduction package" money can buy.

A Somnambulist

I recently attended an AIDS fashion couture gala in the Bois de Boulogne, a scenic area of Paris currently famous for its prostitutes and formerly famous for the opening scene of Gigi with Maurice Chevalier.

At this particular champagne-soaked evening there was a striptease spectacle involving men in hot pink Lycra and transvestites dressed as geishas. I have always had a penchant for beautiful drag queens, so I felt in my element, sporting a mink stole and gold leggings, which would be considered gauche in any other venue.

Surrounded by fashion designers, dapper gay men, and their fancy ladies in waiting, I decided that my favorite character of the night was a sixty-year-old man from the Great American South. He became a modern dancer and directed fashion shows in 1970s Paris. Now he leads a gospel choir and writes operas. When he returns from a nightclub or party, he makes a wistful comment about how 'things are not like they used to be, at Studio 54.'

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.

"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.

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."

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 ...

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.

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.

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."

Hole-in-the-wall

Moving can be a terrifying thing. But when you are young enough, and have yet to accumulate an obscene amount of knickknacks, furnishings, and miscellaneous kitchen appliances, moving can be exciting. My friend has a little country house just a stone's throw outside of Paris, and, like so many people with country houses, he only goes there 3 days out of every year. So, in spite of the babbling brook, lovely vines creeping up the façade, and exemplary local boucherie, he is selling his pretty house in the countryside.

We made a trip there to salvage whatever useful cooking and bedding items we could from the semi-abandoned overgrown ruin. We returned to Paris, packed into a tiny Smart car brimming with old pillows, crystal champagne flutes, kitchen knives, candlesticks, nutcrackers, and a Persian rug. The French tend to be fonder of acquiring ancient objects at auction—whereas Americans are more inclined toward accumulating shiny new Bentleys ... to each his own form of pimp.

Lunar Man

While attempting to recover from jet-lag, I went out dancing in one of those little Parisian "boîtes" where scruffy-looking "art" and film people drink strawberry champagne cocktails in red glasses. I met a typical French boy who was 27 and still living at home with his parents. It seems he is making a career out of getting drunk. When asked what he "does for work," he replied, "I play golf, but I'm injured right now." He was definitely mimbo material.

I told him about the differences between mimbos, wankers, and pimps, and he asked me what I thought of him. I replied, "You are too young to be a pimp. Since you are French, you are automatically part-mimbo." He was determined to become a pimp, but it turns out that after I left the club, he scoffed to his friends about my dance moves and friendly personality: "She is so American."

So in the end he is my first French Wanker of the Week. And I reported to my friend, "If I had been in Manhattan and met a 27-year-old golf-playing gimp who lives with his Mummy, I would have crossed the room immediately to go dance alone "like an American," whatever that means.

Bacchic Dances

In Argentina, as in most foreign countries, children often live with their parents until well into their 20s. This situation is very cost-effective, but when it comes to dating, it can present more than a few problems to young lovers. After a sultry evening at the clubs, it is less than seductive to bring your date back home to share a spot on the couch with your parents, who are inevitably watching Love Actually or some other foppish British love fest.

And to this end, the outskirts of Buenos Aires are teeming with little motels like "Hotel Kiss Me!" and "Deseos Hotel," rings of neon fire encircling their signs. As I gawked at them on the highway, my friend explained: "Those are hotels where you can go for 2 hours and ... " he trailed off, and then continued: "because many young people in Buenos Aires still live at home with their families." Sounds like a time when a name like "Creeper Cabana!" and "Pimp Palace!" would be fitting.

Dulce de leche

The annual polo ball in Newport, Rhode Island was a spectacle to behold. It was in honor of the match between the US and India, so the ball's theme was appropriately "The Taj Ma Ball." Held at the Rosecliff Mansion, the evening was a wine-soaked swirl of middle-aged Newport-ites hob-knobbing, while devolving into various states of reverie upon the dance floor of the ballroom made famous by Robert Redford in the role of Gatsby, the ultimate pimp. Though I have my reservations about the botched 1970s-interpretation of an iconic piece of American literature, very few male actors could pull off wearing that much white.

The Newport polo ball was a raging success. The gauche "ethnic/India" theme even added to the guests' ability to let loose—with men donning various forms of silk kurtas (reminiscent of Hugh Hefner's standard uniform) and the women sporting festive bindis, the crowd seemed free and easy for such a preppy occasion.

An attractive older couple approached me on the dance floor, wanting to know my name and where I was from...they were shocked to discover that I am from Boston—apparently my dance moves seemed more Italian than Puritan in descent.

Rolling Pastry Cutters

The classic Hollywood theme of the magical makeover is ever present in Sydney Pollack's oh-so-'90s version of Sabrina. A sojourn in Paris transforms Sabrina from an awkward "ugly duckling" wallflower to a radiant vision of femininity. Her lifetime crush (played by Greg Kinnear) is a shallow trust fund baby and a quintessential mimbo: blondish, boyish, and easily distracted from the task at hand. In true mimbo form, he sits down and cuts his ass on a pair of champagne flutes that he had intended to use in seducing Sabrina (aka not his fiancée)—talk about quick karmic disaster.

The older brother (played by Harrison Ford) is an endearingly geeky pimp who does all the billion dollar deals for the family company. In the end, I have decided that Harrison Ford circa the early-90s is my ideal dreamboat. His preppy-pimp-boy-scout virility in Working Girl and Sabrina could make end Princess in Flight stop running.

Taffy Pull

A thunderstorm and a marathon of David Lynch's surreal-sinister TV series, Twin Peaks, devolved into an afternoon receiving wisdom from a psychic named Stacey in the Leather District. When a Parisian pop start receives a tarot card reading at the start of Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7, she learns that she is going to die of cancer. My psychic told me that I have a sickness, but she also told me that she could "cure me with crystals and candles and medications, and whatever was necessary...in 9 days...for 300 dollars." Sounds like a deal to me.

Or maybe I should just use the money towards a summer getaway discount. The options on the website include "big cities," "romance," and "sunny spots." Stacey-the-psychic also asked me if I wanted to know the age of my death.

What would you do if you knew how many years you had left to live? Healing crystals, big cities, romance, or sunny spots? Or maybe just watch more Twin Peaks. Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper is pretty hot—sort of a pimp-prince-mimbo fusion.