As my mother Vivien Leigh noted recently, everyone in our family is so unused to all things high falutin' that when something classy our way comes, my siblings, my parents, and I are practically beside ourselves over the chic-i-ness of the experience. Put us on a first-class flight, and we'll take advantage of every offer of a free drink, food item, or warm washcloth. Let us ride business class on AirTran, which now seems to be the only way my brother wants to fly, and we'll go rhapsodic over the satellite radio offerings. And we were to go to a spa--a legitimate one, not something untoward in San Antonio that *some people I know* insist on calling a spa--we'll take the massage, the manicure, the pedicure, and the facial, thank you. With extra cucumbers--for snacking!
Much to our shame and despite a certain amount of boot-strappiness about us, we're all a bit like the Clampetts from The Beverly Hillbillies. You half-expect us to ask at dinner for the fancy pot-passers from the billi-yard room, to check to see if the ce-ment pond is open and whether our critters can join us in a swim, and in our best Elly Mae voice to bid fare-thee-well to our fuss-budgety neighbors with the expression, "This has been a Filmways Presentation!"
A recent case in my point: My job took me traveling again, this time to Philadelphia. Philly not exclusive and chi-chi enough for you? Ah, but you haven't had the luxury of wining, dining, and sleeping on the tab of a major international publishing conglomerate, have you? Which I have now done--and least the sleeping with part (figuratively speaking), as I arrived too late for the dinner and instead just enjoyed the accommodations and the cuisine at the hotel.
And quel hotel! I was put up (with or otherwise) at the Sofitel Philadelphia, which apparently is one of a French-owned chain of luxury (at least to me) hotels, with locations throughout the world. Think sort of a rather high-end Hilton minus the whoring heiress constantly in the glossy mags. Philadelphia Sofi, as I now like to call her, is a looker, a rather large boutique-y hotel near Rittenhouse Square, blooming out of a 1950s international-style office tower on the site of the old Stock Exchange. Much better than it sounds, trust me.
I probably won't do justice to a description of the hotel, nor will the photo I found on their website of the interior of one of their rooms. You get the idea, though, but imagine double the wood paneling, triple the French blue accents on the drapes and wall coverings, and quadruple the free (they are free, aren't they?) samples of posh-sounding toilette items by Roger et Gallet--which for all I know could be the French equivalent of Equate or Suave. The manufacturer of said toiletries was a person/company/brand named Jean-Marie Farina. It might as well be Jean-Marie Buckwheat.
Much to our shame and despite a certain amount of boot-strappiness about us, we're all a bit like the Clampetts from The Beverly Hillbillies. You half-expect us to ask at dinner for the fancy pot-passers from the billi-yard room, to check to see if the ce-ment pond is open and whether our critters can join us in a swim, and in our best Elly Mae voice to bid fare-thee-well to our fuss-budgety neighbors with the expression, "This has been a Filmways Presentation!"
A recent case in my point: My job took me traveling again, this time to Philadelphia. Philly not exclusive and chi-chi enough for you? Ah, but you haven't had the luxury of wining, dining, and sleeping on the tab of a major international publishing conglomerate, have you? Which I have now done--and least the sleeping with part (figuratively speaking), as I arrived too late for the dinner and instead just enjoyed the accommodations and the cuisine at the hotel.
And quel hotel! I was put up (with or otherwise) at the Sofitel Philadelphia, which apparently is one of a French-owned chain of luxury (at least to me) hotels, with locations throughout the world. Think sort of a rather high-end Hilton minus the whoring heiress constantly in the glossy mags. Philadelphia Sofi, as I now like to call her, is a looker, a rather large boutique-y hotel near Rittenhouse Square, blooming out of a 1950s international-style office tower on the site of the old Stock Exchange. Much better than it sounds, trust me.
I probably won't do justice to a description of the hotel, nor will the photo I found on their website of the interior of one of their rooms. You get the idea, though, but imagine double the wood paneling, triple the French blue accents on the drapes and wall coverings, and quadruple the free (they are free, aren't they?) samples of posh-sounding toilette items by Roger et Gallet--which for all I know could be the French equivalent of Equate or Suave. The manufacturer of said toiletries was a person/company/brand named Jean-Marie Farina. It might as well be Jean-Marie Buckwheat.
Lifelong resident of Possum Trot that I am, though, I had to check the price of one night at the Sofi, and it was . . . somewhat unimpressive. A mere $220 a night, which, yes, I've got my nerve, is a lot of money, especially when I'm not paying. However, I was really expecting the room to be more in the $300 to $500 downtown range, not a piddly $200 in the outer suburbs. This doesn't mean I think less of the hotel. It's more that I'm impressed by what $200 will get you in Center City--in terms of accommodations, I mean, not the call girl selection in the hotel bar.
Not that there were any, as far as I could tell, but until I knew the price of the room, I was thinking, man, if I were a call girl, I would totally ply my trade in this hotel! Just proves my point that I don't know how to act when I'm around nice people. You can take the boy out of the Days Inn, but you can't take the Days Inn out of the boy. 'Cause once I learned the price, I just figured anyone who would pay $200 bucks for a hotel room probably isn't going to pay the same amount or more to go, well, around the world. And I'm not talking from Philly to Paris and back again.
Nonetheless, it does go to show you what a little more frivolity and free-wheeling with cash and credit can buy you. I figure it's like wine: Once you graduate from the $8 and under, cherubically labeled, preciously named wines (Turning Leaf? How about Turning Slowly Toward the Toilet to Vomit instead?), and move into the $10 and $20 or above bottles, you definitely get a finer octane of beverage.
Just a little tip for you.
Another little tip for you is not to mistake the French-style toilet for a bidet. An extra $50 to $100 bucks a night doesn't get you that kind of luxury.
* * *
But let's get to my favorite part of the stay at Le Sofitel--the fact that on the hotel cable system, they offered "TV5Monde--Etats-Unis," i.e., French TV Network 5--World, the U.S. edition. With a little encouragement, I would have skipped the presentation I had to make the following day, just to stay in the room to watch "TV Cinq," as now I'm going to insist on calling it.
Why I'm like that, willing to fob off professional responsibilities for weird TV, I don't rightly know, but on trips out of the country--or even just across the country--I find beaucoup amounts of enjoyment in watching local TV. When I went to Russia in 1985, I got hooked on these glitzy Communist-era variety shows (the glitter! the glamour! the awful 5-year-plan-gone-bad hair dye!) on whatever the TV network was called then (GosTeeVee Raz perhaps?).
Later on that same trip, when I was in Sweden, I marveled at how the evening's TV programming was introduced by a woman sitting in an armchair with a sidetable and a lamp, relating to the audience what the night's offerings would be. Like something off the Dumont network in the early '50s--or perhaps for an artier comparison you would accept a reference to the TV hostess in François Truffaut's film adaptation of Farenheit 451. I'm half-surprised the Swedish TV presenter didn't refer to every audience member as "cousin" or show film on the evening news of my trying to make my way around Stockholm, commenting "Look at him run! Like a scared rabbit!" (Editor's note: You really gotta see the film. And, still, the pay-off on the joke won't be that good.)
When I went to England in 1993, I spent an entire (and lovely, rainless) afternoon indoors watching Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of Rebecca on BBC 1, 2, or 4 (no, must have been 1 or 4 because I'm sure the sheep dog trials were on 2) just because it seemed like the thing to do in England on a lovely afternoon.
I've watched soaps in Australia and England, Top 40 music shows in Germany, 'tween and teen programs in Mexico, gay TV networks (pre-Logo) in San Francisco, weird (and homoerotic) weightlifting programs on public access in New York, and more Can-Con in Canada than I care to admit (and god knows, there's a lot of it).
However, my night with TV Cinq is going to rank right up there with the best/worst of them, all because of one TV show, a little something called possibly Fort Boyard (Boyardee?) or Les Petits Princes or maybe something else entirely different. It was kind of hard to tell.
It was also difficult to tell what the program was actually about, even though it was subtitled in English. Some thing's just don't translate well, I guess. But it went kind of like this: Children 12 and under were encouraged to run around a fort perched on a remote rock off of France's western coast (Fort Boyard). The children were then dared to do reality-TV-styled stunts--walk a plank from a tall parapet and jump maybe? try to avoid getting eaten by tigers who've suddenly been released into a pen the children were just in?--in order to earn money (francs? euros?) for some sort of charity, maybe something to do with sick children. One of the sick children was present, and alors, even the infirmed in France look gorgeous and stylish! The child was small and was probably no more than 8 years old, but she had this fantastic asymmetrical bob with a crinkly fringe over her right eye. It was like some sort of 1920s space age 'do, the kind someone in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World might have worn.
When I went to England in 1993, I spent an entire (and lovely, rainless) afternoon indoors watching Alfred Hitchcock's film adaptation of Rebecca on BBC 1, 2, or 4 (no, must have been 1 or 4 because I'm sure the sheep dog trials were on 2) just because it seemed like the thing to do in England on a lovely afternoon.
I've watched soaps in Australia and England, Top 40 music shows in Germany, 'tween and teen programs in Mexico, gay TV networks (pre-Logo) in San Francisco, weird (and homoerotic) weightlifting programs on public access in New York, and more Can-Con in Canada than I care to admit (and god knows, there's a lot of it).
However, my night with TV Cinq is going to rank right up there with the best/worst of them, all because of one TV show, a little something called possibly Fort Boyard (Boyardee?) or Les Petits Princes or maybe something else entirely different. It was kind of hard to tell.
It was also difficult to tell what the program was actually about, even though it was subtitled in English. Some thing's just don't translate well, I guess. But it went kind of like this: Children 12 and under were encouraged to run around a fort perched on a remote rock off of France's western coast (Fort Boyard). The children were then dared to do reality-TV-styled stunts--walk a plank from a tall parapet and jump maybe? try to avoid getting eaten by tigers who've suddenly been released into a pen the children were just in?--in order to earn money (francs? euros?) for some sort of charity, maybe something to do with sick children. One of the sick children was present, and alors, even the infirmed in France look gorgeous and stylish! The child was small and was probably no more than 8 years old, but she had this fantastic asymmetrical bob with a crinkly fringe over her right eye. It was like some sort of 1920s space age 'do, the kind someone in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World might have worn.
Or it's possible that the contestants were trying to earn money for two little people that seemed to accompany the children everywhere--and by little people, I don't mean peasants, I mean dwarves, although they could have been "les petits princes" for all I know. Very confusing. And yet even the little people looked stunning!
It gets worse or better, depending on your perspective: One of the hosts, a sylph-like woman named, I'm sure, Sylvie or Veronique or Chantal--something charmingly and quintessentially Gallic--wore no make-up and her cornsilk blonde hair was held in a simple ponytail. Her clothes were attractive but unimpressive--a flowered, sleeveless top, casual slacks. And yet Sophie looked fantastic.
More to my liking was Olivier (and this really was his name), the hunkiest 40-something rent boy on French TV (or so I would imagine). Black muscle tee, with the muscles to go along with the shirt, a handsome face and friendly smile, tight black trousers, and a great rapport with the kiddies. What is so not to love about this guy? In Britain, the joke is that every male presenter on BBC Children's TV (BBC 3, I believe) is a big raving showtune-loving gal at heart. And, of course, they are. But on French TV, well, you just hope and pray that the male TV hosts know all the words to Gigi, is all I can say.
Sadly, my local cable provider's idea of international TV is Univision and BBC America, all well and good but not as expansive as I had in mind. They pretty much scoffed when I wrote to suggest that they should consider adding Deutsche Welle TV to their offerings because it has excellent international news and business reports.
Thus, I'm fairly convinced they won't take seriously my suggestion to add any French TV channels 'cause I think the hosts are, well, haute.
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