On Footnotes of Mad Men: The Liberation of Betty Draper--Or Not
The thing is, "what school" doesn't refer to university, it refers to public school, or "prep school" as we would have it. And it's true; whatever snobberies exist in the States, and they are many, they never but NEVER revolve around what goddamn high school you went to. Whereas the British curse is always about Fettes or Marlborough or Charterhouse or Winchester. Seventy year old men still wear their SCHOOL TIE, fer chrissake. America does not have school ties.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
I can't verify this, but if you hit your "back" button right after the autorefresh, before doing anything else, you might find your comment sitting there waiting for you. It works on a lot of sites.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
Italian, not French.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
So, every kiss is just a shadow of the first? I must be doing it wrong. I think Betty's certifiable.
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On Egotistical Dubai, $80 Billion in Debt, Is Sliding into the Sea
Gosh, I can't wait to hie myself off to a place where you can be thrown in jail for ten years for having a microscopic fragment of a marijuana leaf stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Where people are so eager to leave they are abandoning their leased BMWs at the airport. Where all the buildings are built with slave labor. Where the weather is similar to the surface of the sun. Sounds like PARADISE.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
Please insert the words "how much" between "believe" and "that", thanks!
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
I can't believe that last shot of Bardot shouting over the railing looks like Julie Christie from about the same era. If I hadn't seen the magazine I'd swear it was her.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
Pete's not the new Don. Pete's the only one on the show who doesn't know how to lie properly. His face gives him away every time. If Don Draper raped some au pair in an apartment building, you can bet there'd be no tears afterwards -- not for him, at least. Pete is a weakling.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: "They See In Her Disaster" or, Love Amongst the Cheaters
I agree with atipofthehat. Bardot was the wild child, unpredicable, always making a scene. Her hair was always tousled, even when it was up. She spent half her time in a bikini, or naked. Betty is none of those things. Betty's a princess, like Audrey. The hair, the dress, the posture, the aristocratic flirting. Bardot wouldn't be sitting there all prim, with sidelong glances; she'd have a dirty look in her eye, and her foot up in Don's crotch, shocking the matrons at the other tables.
What was happening here was Betty playing one of Don's conquests. Don could get into it, because he's done it before. A little roleplay lets her taste the magic of Philandering Don, not boring, mean old Household Don.
Italy was just starting to become fabulous after a long period of poverty; their GDP per head was rising rapidly but still barely half of the US (which was half of what it is today). Tourism was just starting in a big way; while Italy pretty much invented tourism, the "Grand Tour" beginning centuries earlier, it was just opening up to jet travel and mass tourism. Many or most of the romantic ideals of Italy date from this time -- moonlit walks by the fountain, singing gondoliers in Venice, etc. Of course, the reality today is wall-to-wall people snapping photos with their cell phones, but back then, the romance was real. Sort of.
Of course, nothing about Betty is real.
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On Footnotes of Mad Men: The Liberation of Betty Draper--Or Not
Mailer could write a little, here and there, but his downfall always was his obsession with the Boys Club, and who was tough enough to be in it and who wasn't. The problem being, of course, not that his criteria were questionable but that the Club itself was a dubious enterprise. The real writers that Mailer felt himself in competition with -- Roth, Bellow, Updike, for instance -- weren't interested, and they come off better because of it. Mailer in retrospect is wasted talent.