Dave's Fiction Warehouse

I don't know what the big deal is about the Louvre. They only have three things worth looking at. I'm kidding, of course. But to the thousands saluting the Winged Victory, Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo with their cell-phone cameras, the rest of the world's best-known museum might as well be an oversized Furniture Mart. To hell with Botticelli or Renoir; they're there to photograph the Big Three and then get their asses on over to the Eiffel Tower to stand at the end of a 90-minute line. As a gawking tourist myself, I'm familiar with the compulsion to see and record every landmark in the guidebook. But at the Louvre, the crowds milling around these particular pieces radiate the impatience and hunger of paparazzi -- how many blurry pictures will constitute proof of the visit? How many bizarre poses? Would that idiot in the cargo shorts please move a little to the left? These great works became famous because they were masterpieces; today they are just three more celebr...

Our trip to France was lovely, marred only by the near-lethal cold I managed to contract on the transatlantic flight back home. Better then than at the start of the trip, right? Today my throat feels as though I've been gargling battery acid, but the golden memories help mitigate the pain. As the saying goes, we'll always have Paris. We did all the things tourists usually do when they visit France, so I won't expound on them. Instead, here are a few impressions from a first-time visitor who doesn't speak the language. No doubt they'll seem hopelessly naive to veteran Francophiles, but it's my blog. On our first night in France, we were treated to dinner by representatives of the mayor's office of the city of Orleans. As it happened, it was the final night of the city's three-year-old river festival, culminating with a fireworks show. We stood with a crowd of about 80,000 and watched the pyrotechnics light up the night and the Loire River. It was a splend...