Things du jour

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Quote of the day

“I am not a recluse. I live like an unsociable person; it is different. People get on my nerves.” 

— Brigette Bardot, actress, animal activist 

Book of the day

“Bel Canto,” Ann Patchett’s 2001 novel about love, opera and hostage-taking, is one of those contemporary classics you should have read but never got around to, and now, 25 years on, it feels too late. It’s not. I started this book five years ago and put it aside for inexplicable reasons. That diss has haunted me and last week I gave “Bel Canto” another shot. The result was transcendent.

The plot is a small knot that unravels beautifully: A throng of international guests have gathered at the mansion of the vice president of an unnamed South American country for the birthday celebration of a Japanese businessman. A world-famous American opera soprano has been invited to regale the group, and soon, through her exotic talent and beauty, becomes the cynosure of the story. The party is abruptly crashed by leftist guerrillas looking to kidnap the nation’s president, who rather comically skipped the party so he could watch his beloved soap opera at home. Stymied, the invaders take the revelers hostage for what starts as hours, then weeks, then months. Thus the mansion becomes a human incubator, a constellation of international players, some of whom align as unlikely allies, others as peculiar romances fraught with forbidden yearning. It’s a rich tapestry that echoes the diners trapped for months in a similar mansion in “The Exterminating Angel,” Buñuel’s classic takedown of the gilded class. But Patchett is a gentler, less partisan observer, underscoring the universal languages of music, love and language itself for something divine. The book is so meticulously engineered — the many characters are spryly choreographed — and so big of heart that it dashes hopes of ever writing your own novel because it couldn’t brush these literary heights. There’s the hitch: You almost hate “Bel Canto” because it’s so stupid good.

Movie of the day

My love affair with Iranian cinema is long and varied, spanning Jafar Pahahi’s charming debut “The White Balloon” to Abbas Kiarostami’s rigorously philosophical “Taste of Cherry.” Spare, talky and played mostly by untrained actors, the films are often covertly political, critical of the Iranian regime in as coded terms possible, secret messages packed with time bombs. But Pahahi has used his recent movies for brazen broadsides, and as such they are banned in his home country. Yet the director shrewdly snakes around these restrictions and his latest moral thriller “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It’s a bold gesture tracing what happens when a band of former political prisoners kidnap and confront the man they believe brutally tortured them during their imprisonment. Amid the moral complexities of revenge — do they even have the right man? — comes relief via mordant humor and absurdist touches that goose the overall lunacy. (Note the wry allusions to “Waiting for Godot.”) Pahahi has made a tough and moving portrait of keeping one’s humanity in an impossible situation. Its stubborn ambiguity is a hallmark of Iranian cinema, and this one’s a classic. 

Drink of the day

That’d be Mr. Pickles Gin. My newly discovered sip is named for the distiller’s pitt bull rescue, Mr. Pickles, who nobly emblazons the spirit’s label as the official mascot and makes me like it that much more.

Time to taste. Open the senses to a bouquet of dog urine. No. The fragrance is lovely, the gin superb. Its aroma is juniper, citrus, pepper, with a whiff, I think, of dill. It owns a strong herbal flavor with earthy undertones and tinges of orange, pepper and, aptly, a speck of dill pickle. And I swear on Mr. Pickles’ fuzzy head that is not just the power of suggestion. Made in Oregon by Wolf Spirit Distillery, the drink features 12 botanicals, including green tea, blood orange, pink peppercorns and marshmallow root (I have no idea). If it’s not as grand and complex as my revered Monkey 47, which boasts a whopping 47 botanicals and that I drink neat, Mr. Pickles will be a snappy refresher during the dog days of summer.

Photo of the day

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. This one speaks four words: I am so screwed.

The manic mirth of Martin Short

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been a serious Martin Short fan since I was a teenager busting up at reruns of “SCTV,” his brief stint on “Saturday Night Live” and his brilliant HBO specials. I taped a picture of him on my college dorm wall, next to David Letterman and Woody Allen. In 1994, I went to see Short’s movie “Clifford,” in which a 40-year-old Short plays the title’s sociopathic 10-year-old boy, who’s a sustained cyclone of terror. It sounds genius on paper — Short’s elfishness is manically elastic — but the execution is fatal. I should probably see it again. (Recently, I did. “Clifford” is still uproariously unfunny.) 

Short, a comic Einstein who’s allowed a flop or three, is getting late-career appreciation, working his tail off (now on “Only Murders in the Building”) and basking in the attention in the admiring Netflix doc “Marty, Life is Short.” It’s shameless hagiography, and it’s bliss. It’s hard to believe little Marty Short is now 76, but he wears it with class, his exhibitionist spark undimmed, his contagious joy unbridled.

To tell Short’s story, director and longtime friend Lawrence Kasdan unspools a choice reel of home movies, outtakes, clips from “The Three Amigos” to “Father of the Bride” and a bevy of adoring tributes from pals and colleagues like Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Eugene Levy and the late Catherine O’Hara. It gets personal, including romances (one with a young Gilda Radner), marriage, children and a series of crushing family tragedies that would eviscerate a less upbeat mortal. Despite it, Short remains a resilient life force, a one-man fireworks display, and perhaps the nicest guy in showbiz.

A few of Short’s characters: Jackie Rogers Jr., Ed Grimley and defensive tobacco CEO Nathan Thurm

Probably belting show tunes right out of the womb, this human whirligig is a quadruple threat — singer, dancer, actor, clown. His superpower is his thirst for applause, so he’s never not performing, prancing around his living room or hamming it up on late night. The show must go on, and on. His ammo isn’t written jokes but a volcanic gift of improv reminiscent of Robin Williams. Wind him up, let him rip. 

He’s the Lon Chaney of sketch comedy, inhabiting a freak’s gallery of invented characters, be it uber-nerd Ed Grimley, cross-eyed albino showman Jackie Rogers Jr. or blubbery celebrity antagonizer Jiminy Glick. One minute he’s earthbound, then, bang, he jolts into character. Being close to Short, says comic John Mulaney, is “like being your best friend in the world who happens to be the weirdest person ever.” That’s about the zestiest thing said about Short in the doc, which is of course a celebration, even if it sometimes feels like a career-capping coronation. His pals are gushers, understandably. It almost brings a tear to your eye. What, after all, is a little fawning among friends?

Books I’m not ambivalent about

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“Transcription”

I could see this happening to me: On the way to interview a very important person, you drop your phone, i.e. your recording device, into a sink filled with water. Phone ruined, you are forced to interview the person without a recorder, a fact you fudge by reconstructing the confab from memory for your article, a high-wire act and any writer’s nightmare. Novelist Ben Lerner — who’s also a gifted poet and has been dubbed the “most talented writer of his generation” — uses this premise as a springboard to something timely, profound and ineffably transfixing. A novel in name only — think the brainy consciousness streams of Rachel Cusk — the 130-page “Transcription” presents a nameless narrator and two other men in conversations about art, life, friendship, fatherhood and technology amid the backdrop of early Covid. Plot is nebulous and tricky to summarize, but the brilliance at work is distinctly Lerner’s. (I’m an avid fan of his novels “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04.”) Lerner writes deceptively plain prose with a wizard’s wand — simple on the surface, yet each hypnotic line peels layers of insight and meaning. It’s all mesmerizingly meandering, to a destination both uncommon and rewarding. 

“Lost Lambs”

In this sharp and irreverent new novel, Madeline Cash flips notions of family, marriage, community, church and capitalism to expose their crawly underbellies. It’s prickly, spot-on, strange. And hilarious. The book’s many moving parts include an open marriage that veers to amorous calamity; star-crossed trysts; a trio of precocious teens that grazes danger in a vile adult world; a tech billionaire whose dealings are creepy at best; and a church Father whose hands may be scandalously dirty. Cash trains a compassionate bullseye on those creatures called teenagers and a cynic’s bead on the perilous pact of matrimony. (“The biggest conspiracy of all? This whole love thing,” a character sniffs.) But Cash isn’t cruel. She exudes empathy and openly likes her characters — the ones that deserve it. “Lost Lambs” is frothy literary fiction, until it’s not. It is droll and buoyantly written yet lands the well-placed left hook. I can imagine it becoming a four-part Netflix series, a smart, soapy, surreal dramedy starring Ben Stiller and Laura Linney. If it happens, I won’t watch it. I’ll stick to the book. The book is always better.

Three humor collections by Sloane Crosley

David Sedaris is the standard-bearer of comic essays. I believe this is wrong. I believe he is drastically overrated. I believe he is rarely actually funny. I believe his prose is limp. I believe his professional persona is as confected as a Girl Scout Samoa. You know who’s wittier, hipper and more stylish? Sloane Crosley, who’s written three collections of humor essays that impressed me enough to sit down and commit hosannas. Her first collection, “I Was Told There’d Be Cake,” is best. It also has the best title. Although “How Did You Get This Number,” her second book, and “Look Alive Out There,” her latest collection (from 2018), also have wry, hooky titles. Part-journalism, part-memoir, Crosley’s essays are first-person escapades, experiential and anecdotal and typically relatable. They bristle with razor observation and social commentary. Here, she mordantly muses about her only slightly embarrassing collection of plastic toy ponies. There, she riffs on her fraught city-girl excursion to Alaska, where, in an SUV, there is one guy among many women: “He is our lone star of testosterone in a galaxy of chick.” She deconstructs the bizarro experience of playing herself on “Gossip Girl” and takes merciless stock of her dating life. It’s not all playtime. Crosley doesn’t duck drama and high stakes (her queasy adventures in altitude sickness are almost contagious). Like Sedaris, some of Crosley’s situations and interactions smack of exaggeration or plot-propelling fancy. Such is the plight of the mass-consumed writer — feed the beast. Though the humor is a soft weave, coolly conversational, she can be overtly jokey, and the jokes rarely clank. Her voice is reliably amusing, cut with a measure of snark that gives her sweet prose a tangy kick.

“Flesh”

In minimalist language so parched it’s practically puckered, David Szalay spins a story of the classic Solitary Man, a Hungarian immigrant in England named István who embraces a nearly non-verbal solitude as a shield against a world of discomfort. We follow this modern existential character from his cringey deflowering as a teen to his coupling with a rich married woman and decades beyond. Szalay’s tensed prose mirrors the character’s isolation, which occasionally sees shafts of light. While his interior life remains unexamined — his disaffection can be frosty — István is no cipher. He’s a well-drawn loner, a compelling picture of alienation. He’s also something of a symbol, a metaphor for class, urban malaise, the gesture of empty sex and deep loss. (It’s telling that his extravagant cigarette habit is a key character trait.) István fascinates by dint of what he shows as much as by what he withholds. What’s so remarkable about “Flesh,” which won the Booker Prize in 2025, is a descriptive precision and drum-tight realism that would make Hemingway beam. Grim and gripping, it’s a master class in control.

Is Seoul dull?

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Answer: sort of. 

To be clear, Seoul is cool. Tasty food. Delightful, welcoming people. Comfortable climate. Neat culture. Efficient transportation. Lots of greenery. Er …

I’m running out of tepid superlatives.

When you go someplace faraway that turns out to be a partial disappointment, there’s not much you can do but shrug and eat the money you spent, doing it with a wincing grin and a strained bulwark around regret. 

I just returned from a week in Seoul, South Korea, and while I had a fine time, ate well and overall enjoyed the novelty of an uncharted capital city, it was lacking the electricity, neon bang and enveloping fizz I was hoping for, and indeed feel I was promised in my exhaustive research for the trip.

Things that stood out: Korean fried chicken, which cheekily goes by the initials KFC but ably kicks that franchise’s ass as far as creativity and salivating edibility. Also Korean BBQ, which requires guests to grill slabs of raw pork or beef and veggies on a grill in the middle of their table, and is served with an array of traditional Korean sides, including, of course, kimchi, love it or hate it (I kinda like that spicy pickled cabbage). 

A table mate cooking up Korean BBQ at the same place Anthony Bourdain ate his first K-BBQ.

What else? A clutch of world-class museums, like the Leeum Museum of Art, hosting riveting contemporary and traditional Korean art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, where the first major Asian exhibition of British provocateur Damien Hirst (genius or charlatan?) was being showcased. Squirming with live octopuses, crabs and lobsters, and perfumed with tongue-tickling eons of Korean street food, the bustling Gwangjang Market offered excellent vittles — if you factor out the misbegotten “gelato” I dumbly bought.         

And yet for all that, plus its plush verdancy — trees are abundant, parks plentiful — Seoul is far from the most handsome city I’ve visited. A hazy, pale brown sameness dominates and the skyline is crowded with towering forests of depressingly uniform apartment buildings that resemble the subsidized urban housing found in, say, New York.  

I was underwhelmed. Maybe I set my sights too high. What I ask when I journey half-way round the globe is astonish me. I’ve been to adequate places before. The beaut that is Budapest, for one, didn’t knock my socks off. And Bologna, despite its undeniable gothic charm, failed to make my head spin. Arles: same. Buenos Aires: ditto.

In no particular order, I can rattle off twenty major cities that are more exciting, more charismatic, than Seoul, places I would gladly return to and have: Paris, Istanbul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome, San Francisco, Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Sevilla, Mexico City, Berlin, Naples, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Krakow, London, Florence, Mumbai, Bangkok.

What specifically let me down in Seoul? I won’t dwell on the negative — nothing was actually bad — though I will point out two areas of the city that are oversold. 

First, Gyeongbokgung Palace. It actually is a magnificent spread of ancient royalty and spiritual significance. Until you learn that the palace was built in the 1500s but was destroyed over decades and partially rebuilt in 1960. What stands now comes from a long-term restoration project that began in the 1990s and is still ongoing.

Oh. One of those. It’s like looking at a museum model, so removed from the original structure that it seems fake, a Lego model kit. And this is considered the top site to visit in Seoul. Hit the snooze button.

The latest version of Gyeongbokgung Palace, where you stroll while your mind wanders to lunch plans.

Then there’s Seongsu-dong, Seoul’s premier “newtro” hotspot, often called the “Brooklyn of Seoul” for its blend of repurposed industrial factories, trendy cafes and fashion pop-ups. A huge draw is the gaudy Dior store, in front of which girls and women snap mortifying selfies for reasons unfathomable. 

I actually paid a guide to shuttle me through this consumer orgasm on a tour he curated. He showed me sunglasses stores, phone and K-beauty stores. I would smile and nod, wondering, wha? He led me into pretty cafes and eateries, where we did not drink or eat. I would nod again, impressed, but not really.

On a happier note, my hotel was a dazzling oasis in the lively Itaewon district, stacked with elegant bars and restaurants and even featured one of Korea’s ever-reliable convenience stores (as in Japan and Hong Kong, 7-Eleven is ubiquitous). The impeccable staff at the hotel couldn’t have been more gracious and helpful. I’ve never said thank you so many times, so genuinely, in such a short period. 

Still, in Seoul, Korea, the epicenter of all things high-tech, futuristic and culturally forward, and from whence sparkling K-pop was born and unleashed like lightning across the world, I couldn’t help but wonder … Where’s the pop?

A petrified pup, a brilliant book, a nip of neurosis

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The dog keeps staring at me. 

Outside, gusty winds render trees, shrubs and bushes lashing percussion fit for a Nine Inch Nails concert. I’m gazing into the helpless eyes of a small Schnauzer-terrier that’s terrified of the thrashing flora this warm spring day has unleashed.

Cubby the Super Hound — he should have a cape and rubber suit with nipples on it — has his kryptonites, and one of them is blustery winds that rattle objects into outdoor cacophonies. There goes a recycling bin and all its clattering innards. Whoosh-bang, a gate door swings open and shut, on repeat. And those whipping, whistling trees are declamations of the devil. For him, it must be like dwelling in a haunted house, terrorized by loud, chilling sounds of unseen provenance.

As long as the wind blows, he follows closely wherever I go, as if my pockets are stuffed with treats (they are not). At rest, he cautiously climbs on my lap and quakes like a 25-cent motel bed. 

He looks up at me, pleadingly. I look back at him, pitifully. It’s a staring contest between man and beast. Alas, the poor pup wins every time.

I’m re-reading a deep, delightful little novel titled “The Friend,” which is about writers and writing, friendship, dogs and suicide — a perfect brew of the contemplative, canine and emotionally punchy. It stars a nameless narrator, a middle-aged writer, who’s in a ghostly, one-sided conversation with her close friend, also a writer, who killed himself. It also stars a depressed Great Dane the size of a zebra. The 2018 book won the National Book Award and the author, Sigrid Nunez, has a wry, gently profound way with words and ideas. She has a lot to say about creativity, loss and bonding and does so with chiseled economy washed in a beauty that’s unshowy but electric. “The Friend” runs a mere 212 pages — a wisp, a wonder — but contains worlds of hilarious, heartbreaking humanity. It was made into a movie starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, but I won’t watch it. I don’t want to upset the novel’s unruffled perfection.

The South Korea trip — that again — is creeping closer and the old pre-trip jitters are manifesting. Things like: Will I get through customs with Xanax in my luggage? The anti-anxiety meds are a controlled substance and bringing them into Korea requires reams of draconian paperwork, including an absurd handwritten note from your doctor. I’m going to chance it; they don’t always ask. If they do stop me and confiscate it, well, I hope they enjoy. It’s a blast!

I’m also getting flustered, a churning storm in my gut, about possible TSA lines that run longer than a Frederick Wiseman documentary. I can’t stand long lines, and for some reason airport security lines make me irrationally nervous. I find them stressful, mania-inducing, like I did something wrong and I’m about to get busted by some granite-faced goon. I’ve purchased TSA PreCheck, which allows small security short cuts (e.g., you don’t have to take off your Nikes) and theoretically provides shorter waits. We’ll see about that during this latest Congressional crisis. Where’s the Xanax?

How I spent last Saturday, all cheers, jeers and blaring car horns. The signage — priceless:

It was cathartic.

Bin there, done that

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“I love to travel. I just hate the travel part.” — old axiom

Why is boarding a plane so unpleasant? It’s unnecessarily stressful, for me at least, riddled with confusing queuing rules, mumbly loudspeaker instructions that sound like the adults in Charlie Brown specials, brazen line-cutters, and the overall sense of sweaty barnyard herding.

My biggest stress point is the overhead bins and making sure I find a space for my small carry-on roller that’s not in row 57 when I’m in row 22. So now, on United, I pay a $24 fee for “priority boarding” largely to avoid overhead bin combat. (Though passenger jostling is an amazing spectacle.) Even then it can be a hassle to locate an empty bin that some moron hasn’t stuffed with jackets and backpacks that belong under the seat.

I’ve never tussled with a fellow passenger for bin space, but once while struggling I murmured “shit” under my breath and a flight attendant heard me (what is he, a cocker spaniel?) and said aloud, “Oh, we’ve got a live one here,” which of course only pissed me off more.

Paying for priority boarding is worth it. It places you in line 2, just behind the first-class bigwigs, meaning you board in the second group instead of the saps in 3 through 5, who shed bitter tears as they futilely seek space in the already packed overhead bins while you coolly, regally read your book, your carry-on stowed directly above you, snug and smug.

But that, of course, is only the beginning of the journey. The rest is its own kind of nightmarish diabolical shitty hell. The cramped, crowded quarters. Seat backs that bonk you on the forehead. Mealy meals — chicken or pasta, always. Drenched, toilet paper-strewn lavatories (their term, not mine). Butts constantly bumping you in the aisle seat as people scrunch by. Chiclet-size pillows made of gauze. And so forth in the untold litany of awful air travel platitudes.

The tradeoff for this misery is why you do it. Flights will wreck you with stress and redeye fatigue. They are, frankly, a pain in the ass. My post-flight recovery time is cosmic. But then I rebound, ready for days of stuff in a new city, until it’s time for the dreaded return flight. I steel myself for this phenomenon.

The going-back blues are knee-buckling, a gut punch of leaving a place at which you seemingly just arrived. Oh, the banality of home! The only remedy is to begin mapping your next trip, including — and this is critical, really, listen — strategizing how to snag the perfect overhead bin, a forward-thinking start to any vacation.

Joy to the world.

I stabbed my face, and other fun things 

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Before I visit a country for the first time, I like to bathe in the local culture, mainly through books and movies. (I save the food part until I get there and do it right, with bite.) As mentioned in my last post, I head to Seoul, South Korea, in a few weeks, so I’ve been hungrily reading novels and watching films by Korean artists. Christ, they’re grim. How I love it.

Take “Memories of Murder,” by Bong Joon-ho, who made the stinging class-warfare satire and Oscar-winner “Parasite,” itself fairly bleak. This excellent serial-killer detective saga throbs with death and dark humor, winding down to a gut-punch ending that will leave your jaw somewhere around your big toes. Kim Jee-woon’s “I Saw the Devil” is another serial-killer drama, a fiendishly clever spin on the revenge thriller splattered with brutally sadistic punishments that I cannot speak of here, lest the authorities bust in.

Something lighter? Try the smash Netflix series “Squid Game,” in which financially strapped citizens try to win millions playing grueling games with the simple rule: you lose, you die. I haven’t seen so many blood geysers since “The Wild Bunch.”

Twisted, yes. But then you don’t know Park Chan-wook’s 2003 masterpiece “Oldboy.” Yet another revenge rampage, Park peppers his gorgeously gory film with creative curlicues not easily forgotten — like the antihero devouring a whole, live, squirming octopus in one take and, later, fending off dozens of assassins armed with only a hammer, a tour de force of cinematic choreography.

It’s not much sunnier on the book side. I just finished the slim novel about suicide “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself” by Young-Ha Kim. It’s gloomy, but also not great. It’s infatuated with its own misery. 

More famous is “The Vegetarian” by Nobel Prize-winner Han Kang. The heroine of this celebrated novel renounces meat, triggering a plague of psychological and bodily repercussions. (Put. Down. The. Cheeseburger.) And I’ve just started “Lemon” by Kwon Yeo-sun, about the unsolved murder of a high school student. More death — party time!

Is Korea so cracked? Apparently I’ve tapped into a thick cultural vein of crime, vengeance, class disparity, the sordid and surreal, the darkly existential and the exceptionally, even giddily, violent. That vein is a bloody gusher.

Speaking of unchecked violence, the other day I bayonetted my cheek with a thumbtack. I was lancing a pimple, not too giant, but big enough to evoke the Elephant Man. A hard, stubborn whitehead that was impervious to onslaughts by furious fingernails. So I said F-it, I’m getting a tack and uprooting this beast. First, I sterilized the tack’s point in the dancing blaze of a Bic lighter. Then I rinsed it in hot water. Then I took the business end of said tack and dug out the pimple’s white core from my cheek. Blood happened, but I extracted the thing in 30 seconds flat. My threshold for pain and gore is impressively high. The tattered flesh around the deceased pimple healed in a few days. I am an absolute master. Dermatologists, take note. And fellow zitheads: Shelve the Stridex. You might find more relief at Staples than CVS.

Like its kaleidoscopic neighbor Japan, South Korea is a Day-Glo bouncy house of the whack, weird and wonderful. While there, I will have ample offbeat options: Should I visit the Toilet Park and Museum, aka Mr. Toilet House, a festival of fecality? Or the Penis Park and Museum, studded with upright totems of erotic arousal (stop it!)? Or the Meerkat Friends Cafe, where twelve meerkats — so smooshily cute, like living anime creatures — a random raccoon and a floofy white Arctic fox scamper and play with you as you sip, and conceivably spill, coffee? I’ll be at all of them, of course. Oh, I almost forgot the popular Poop Cafe, whose theme is all things playfully bowel-adjacent (think chocolate soft serve, etc.). Consider it checked.

From the South to South Korea: a drastic change in plans 

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’m supposed to be in Nashville right now. But I’m not, and I’m glad. 

A trip down South was planned as a post-France jaunt, 3.5 days, fast, domestic, easy and fun. I’d do it in early March while the weather’s still mild, my final trip till the annual fall journey in October or November, wherever that may be.

I booked a Nashville hotel, some tours and great restaurants, and of course a flight. But very late in the game it struck me that the math wasn’t computing. The damn thing, for hardly four days in a city of modest attractions, was costing just shy what a longer trip abroad would cost. I blanched, then I panicked. What was I doing, numbskull?

This was two weeks ago, this brilliant epiphany I should have seen months ago. Text my brother, I thought and I did. He began firing off trip ideas — Granada and Valencia, Spain, for starters — then, boom, he sent me a swanky hotel bargain in … Seoul, South Korea. My immediate text response: “Oooooo.” A fire was lit.

Despite having in the past mulled Seoul as a destination, it never quite captured my imagination, even though it looks like the sister city — high rises, high tech, sleek and seductive, old and new — of Tokyo, one of my favorite places. 

Quick like, I was on the web, from Chat GPT and Lonely Planet, to TripAdvisor and YouTube, researching and rummaging. And, hell, if Seoul wasn’t completely captivating. Pagodas meet K-Pop, kimchi mingles with Korean BBQ, and temples to godlike emperors and gaudy consumerism abound. I checked mid-April weather (cool to warmish) and saw that it’s also peak cherry blossom season. What!

I’m a capricious creature, incurably impulsive, too often following my gut before my head (see: Nashville). But while this reversal — I booked the Seoul hotel and swapped my Nashville flight credits for Korea credits — is dramatic and sudden, it is not rash.  

Rash implies foolish and reckless. This time I’ve thought it out, lured to a place I’ve never been, based on hours of homework. Frankly, my heart was never fully in Nashville. It was whimsical, poorly reasoned. They may serve soul food there, but they don’t serve Seoul food. Tours are booked — I might be most excited about the “Anthony Bourdain Ultimate Korean BBQ Experience,” and why not? — hotel secured, etc. The flights are a time-sucking monstrosity — 20-some hours — but you gotta roll with it if you’re committed.  

I am at peace. I’m also madly excited.

Marseille? Oui, oui!

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

The email contained bad news. My guide, whose ratings are off the charts, was bailing on our tour of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. Cold comfort: He was enlisting a substitute guide in his place, someone named Ivanna, about whom I knew nothing. I pictured a comely Ukrainian woman, perhaps bespectacled, tall, sweet and ironic. 

A few days later Ivanna introduced herself via text: “I’ll be the little Asian lady with bluish hair, so I’ll be hard to miss!” 

Oh. Grand.

Trips are rife with hiccups, snags. This wasn’t one of them. Ivanna turned out to be a joy, a brainy fount of local knowledge, witty, thoughtful, considerate, with hair tinted a winning shade of cobalt. She’s young, Malaysian, went to Loyola University in Maryland and speaks three languages. She lives in Aix with her husband and children. In two brisk, stuffed hours, she led me down skinny cobblestone lanes and yawning boulevards, telling me scads about the city’s history, from kings to cathedrals, and where to get the best ice cream and ogle good art. 

This is the best of travel — the brain- and eye-popping excursions that crack open new vistas you could only wonder about. Topped with two scoops of lip-smacking ice cream. 

I was staying in Marseille for six days last week and Aix was an obvious day trip, as was Arles (Roman ruins! Van Gogh!), but more on that lovely town another time. Marseille and Aix are 39 minutes apart by train, yet worlds apart in complexion. 

Marseille: gritty and huge (France’s second largest city); slathered in graffiti and street art; assertively multicultural; set on a picturesque port; growling with speeding scooters and motorbikes; part Paris, part chaos.  

Aix: exuberant, medieval charm constructed of yellow and ocher stone; clock towers, boulevards and basilicas; fountains juiced by thermal springs; home of Cézanne (though, tragically, the city owns none of his paintings); boutiques and tranquil beauty.  

The dichotomy is dizzying. One thumps with rap and rock, while the other strolls, hands in pockets, whistling. Both are ancient —  at 2,600 years old, Marseille is the oldest city in France — and exude that quaint, sometimes ghastly, always intoxicating historical spirit that Europe seems to have a monopoly on. 

One of many famed fountains in Aix-en-Provence

Why Marseille, you say? Partly because it’s enjoying a moment right now, with hosannas in The New York Times to Condé Nast Traveler and beyond. A trend follower I am not. I did a day trip to Marseille in 2007 that spurred my urge to return to this bustling, bracingly diverse city. And so I did. And I’m glad. There you have it.

Marseille’s reputation for crime and grime is passé at best, slanderous at worst. Locals laughed with me when this was brought up, like, What are they talking about? Think New York, Chicago, San Francisco — they have their blights and trouble spots, but there are simple ways around that. And what’s a big city without some dirt under its nails? (My Fodor’s travel guide said my hotel was in an “iffy” neighborhood. I call bullshit. The crib and the hood are très cool.)

Marseille’s fabled Cours Julien district. It’s never met a can of spray paint it didn’t love.

Vaunted as a foodie’s paradise, Marseille let me down many times gastronomically. I tucked into good but never great dishes originating from France, Italy, Argentina, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast. Alas, with heaving disappointment, my maiden acquaintance with Marseille’s world-famous fish stew, bouillabaisse, was a bust. The fish was dry and flavorless, the broth bland and tepid, and this was at legendary bouillabaisse megastar Chez Fonfon. The soup and one glass of wine took me for a hundred US dollars. The web review I wrote back at the hotel is a seething tirade about getting rooked.

Where the food flopped, the people shined. My minor allergy to others is cured when I travel. Connections with locals are almost always tonic and nourishing, pulling me out of my fortress of solitude to swap world views and pleasantries. We laugh as we wrestle with our linguistic limitations — my French is pretty much non-existent, basically sign language — and commiserate when politics are broached, which gladly is not often.

Marseille from the hilltop Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica

My past as a film critic is my social super power. It uncorks an uncanny passion in people that’s rooted in the universal language of cinema. I had a half dozen lively conversations with local Marseillaise about their favorite films and filmmakers, from Tarantino to Tarkovsky and every indie and classic in between. France’s renowned love affair with the movies burns bright. (I stumped them all when I mentioned “Annie Hall,” however.)

Meanwhile, over at my hotel, the hipster joint with the hipster name, Mama Shelter Marseille, the music played loud on weekends, pure DJ slop stuck on the same crowbar-to-the-cranium beat. The throb carried straight to my fourth-floor room well past 1 a.m. and I found myself in grandpa grumpus mode, calling reception to complain. To my surprise, the next day they upgraded my room to a larger one away from the bar, and even gifted me two fat gourmet cookies and a bottle of apricot juice. I felt like a little boy. I thought it was the nicest thing in the world. I’ve never said merci beaucoup so many times.

A small Marseille port, lined with restaurants, including the notorious Chez Fonfon. A soup with a view.

About fifteen feet from the hotel is a tiny pizzeria, really rather a dump that’s mostly for take-out, where I got my final meal in Marseille. No more overpriced, underwhelming haute cuisine on this trip, I sniffed. 

Again, the people. The pizzeria is run by a stout, olive-skinned woman in perhaps her mid-forties with a handkerchief on her head and flour on her hands. I bought three plain slices and while they heated up we chatted in stilted English (she apologized for hers) about where I was from and she seemed happy for this foreigner’s patronage.

She told me her son had just visited Miami and loved it. She asked if I had been and I had to say I wasn’t a big fan of South Beach — the place reeks of douchebaggery, though I left that out — but that young men adore it and, for that, America is doomed. I left that out, too. She chuckled. I took my slices back to the hotel and bellowed a hearty Merci! Au revoir!

Later, after watching “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in French with no subtitles, I went to bed. I heard nothing but the occasional motorbike screaming down the narrow streets.

The city in its graffitied glory. Me, I love the street art. It has character, panache.

In the throes of snow

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It came down hard, in a swirling nocturnal swoop, the white stuff, upholstering everything in its voracious colditude. So pretty! Yes, adorable. The abominable snow mess. Ain’t it cute?

So it’s bad, 12 inches bad, but it’s actually rather doable. This isn’t Quebec or the South, so we deal. Yet a pain it remains, digging out cars, shoveling walkways, taking care not to slip on your derriere and, perhaps most perilous, wearing caps with fuzzy balls on top.

It’s cold. Often when it snows the temperature stays reasonable, but it’s downright frigid and the combo compounds the icy aura. Is this what Moscow is like? Walking Cubby the dog is a polar expedition and the poor pup has to sport a Christmas-themed sweater that he finds humiliating. I find it humiliating. Anyway, my snow boots are killing me. I need a dog sled.

The kids dig the downy manna. Even now, in the darkness of 8 p.m., they’re sledding down the longer, steeper driveways, laughing and hooting. “Cooper, you get in the front this time!” a boy hollers, setting up his friend for a suicide mission.

The city plows the streets as fast as possible — i.e. a crawl — and neighbors shovel and snow-blow their sidewalks, so getting around is a little less precarious. Still, it’s a slalom course, weaving and leaping around the ice, metastasizing puddles and soufflés of snow. It’s ground-level climatic chaos. (And for all this, I still abhor summer.) Car tires crunch and slush, rolling through the slurry.

It will take days, weeks, for the mounds to melt. Someone built a sweet miniature snowman in the front yard, maybe eight inches tall. The dog dutifully urinated on it and it partially caved in. Is that what we need to rid all of this stuff? Cubby, your work is cut out for you.

One town away from me. (Photo: NYT)