I want Larry David to get a food show just so he can take a bite of some celebrated delicacy and then say, “Eh, not as good as I thought it would be.”
Saturday morning I received an email from a friend in St. Petersburg saying she'd seen me quoted in the new issue of National Geographic (in an essay on travel). Later that day another friend texted me that his wife had seen the same article. They too live in St. Petersburg.
A few weeks ago I started watching Pretend It’s a City, the Martin Scorsese documentary about Fran Lebowitz, and eventually turned it off. The great wit of New York, it seemed, had grown into a grumpy old woman. Also, even when funny, she embodies what I find most annoying in many New Yorkers: The confident belief that everyone else is inferior.
On social media I read a piece by the New York Times’s Ginia Bellafante that was a rare critique of the comedian. A number of people agreed with Bellafante’s criticisms, and reading their comments I found myself liking Lebowitz again.
Fresh Air’s interview yesterday with John Colapinto about the human voice ranged far and wide but never touched on the subject of speaking foreign languages.
In season three of The Crown, there is a wonderful scene of the Duke of Edinburgh in a private audience with the crew of Apollo 11. The prince craves some insight into the sensation of standing on the moon, and the astronauts fail to give him any; they are all about the technical aspects of the achievement and blind to its metaphysical dimensions. The scene may be an exaggeration, or perhaps completely made up, but it beautifully depicts the disappointment that sometimes results from a meeting with one’s heroes.