Jay McInerney is a New England boy who turned to the cocaine culture of 1980s Manhattan as inspiration for his breakout novel, Bright Lights, Big City. He went from fact-checking at The New Yorker to being part of the “literary brat pack” (along with Bret Easton Ellis), turning his book into a hit Hollywood film, [...]

Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland film is a delicious feast for anyone with a taste for the glamorous gothic aesthetic that Burton does so well. Alice is played by an adorable 20-year-old Australian actress (Mia Wasikowska) who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow and is perfect for the role of “sweet young girl [...]

I recently ducked into a gloomy Parisian café that I thought seemed ideal for a quick lunch, since it had such an authentic vibe and the men at the bar selling cigarettes seemed so charming and elderly. I took a quick pee in the bathroom, which was very authentic as well. That is, if by [...]

As a recent college graduate with a non-corporate liberal arts degree, and an interest in jobs that are more “creative,” there are limited options that await me in the real ['financially challenged'] world: babysitter, SAT tutor, non-specific sex-worker, waiter, and unpaid intern are the first ones that come to mind. Unfortunately, the last option has [...]

In the good old days, the Yale faculty used to be free to have sexual affairs with any student on campus. I used to linger too long in the cozy collegiate lair of my ravishing archaeology professor’s office. On my way out of our intense intellectual ’sessions,’ I would accidentally drop all my books and [...]

I made a pilgrimage to Brussels all to see the exhibition of Frida Kahlo paintings at the Bozar museum. As a teenager, Frida was in a serious bus accident that led to her life as a semi-invalid, undergoing 32 surgeries in 30 years. Forced to wear plaster corsets and remain in bed for months on end, [...]

It’s a classic set-up: a teenage girl is trapped in a bourgeois family in suburban England. She resents her father, watches French films, romanticizes about drinking wine along the banks of the Seine, and studies so hard that maybe she won’t become trapped in a dreary chintz-covered interior like her mother. Enter: a middle-aged man [...]

For my birthday I experienced one of the best things in Paris: the over-the-top restaurant so elegant that it doesn’t seem over-the-top at all. Le Grand Véfour is a sumptuous flourish of red velvet banquettes, Italianate ceiling paintings, and neoclassical frescos creeping up the gilded walls. I had a lobster appetizer enrobed in a citrus [...]