And Merlot is so right. I was lying awake this morning after getting up to pee at 3a.m. when it suddenly hit me: the noun gerund can be gerunded! I don't know if revelations like that can keep you awake, but just thinking about the postmodernity of that concept had me more awake than if I had just downed a double espresso with extra whipped cream.
When it comes to being postmodern we Americans have much to learn from the Europeans, and when I say Europeans I am not referring to the sweaty Euro trash nations threatening to drag the Union off the cliff of bankruptcy. No, I am referring instead to the European nations with a higher rate of suicidality: the Swedes, the Swiss and above all, the French. When we Americans were quilling on parchment that all white men with lots of land and slaves were created equal to King George and his royals, the French RSVPed by setting up a guillotine and slicing off the heads of all their landed gentry. It was as if Americans were naive teenagers playing with their first bongs, while the French were perfecting their thousand year old recipes for champagne. It was like Americans wearing their first training bras, stating that all men were created equal by a just and fair God, while the French marched a fierce peasant woman over the bodies of the dead and named her Liberty, and then commissioned Delacroix to make a famous painting of her, topless.
Can you even imagine Americans guillotining our rich? Donald Trump, Pares Hilton and any buffoon with a billion dollars is followed around with a TV camera and we cannot resist watching them buy underwear at a boutique in New York City. Not so the French.
Though the French do still have some vestiges of naivete themselves. Take their ban on women wearing sleeveless dresses in the L'Ouvre. Why are armpits so sexy, especially when you are about to see 200 paintings of full frontal Renaissance porn? And that does bring us back to French sophistication: the French put their porn in museums, while Americans house theirs on the internet. I ask you, which is more chic?
And smoking, have I mentioned smoking? Americans have banned smoking except in the most private of private settings. You are more likely to see someone having sex than shamefully sneaking a cigarette in public. But the Franks? No, the only places they have banned smoking are places where they want American tourist dollars. And while Americans fawn at the sophistication of a French tourist shopping for cologne, the French sneer in disgust as Americans order foie gras and wash it down with a Coke.
So I have to agree with you, Merlot, French poodles are worthy of the eyebrow that you raise and that half-smile you give me as we sniff our way back home.