[13] Lost Generation — Woody Allen, Standup Comic: 1964-1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z85zt_EUySg

Still funny, though I suspect the literary references go over younger heads.

The main character played by Owen Wilson is visiting Paris with his fiance. Somehow he blunders into a way to time travel back to Paris in the 20s and meets that crowd. On later nights he manages to continue his visits. In between there is plenty of hate for Republicans.

It’s a gentle, humorous film for liberal audiences and no doubt reminded them of the Woody’s salad days. As I recall it’s based on an old comic piece he wrote for the New Yorker and was published in one of his early collections.

I’m met others who love “The Moderns” too.

It got good numbers from critics and audience on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it did poorly at the box office and never became a cult film. I guess 1988 was past the expat Paris sell-by date.

The Hemingway scenes were all great comic touches.

A boring little trip under the sea on a bullet train:

https://youtu.be/mkcdXPSXv4k

Forget the stuff about appropriateness of High Speed Rail and just focus on everything not being filthy, the aural environment being designed to be soothing, the lack of loitering Diversity and the general maintenance of standards.

Oh… and the assumption that foreigners will need to accommodate themselves to local conditions. I don’t see that ticket printed in Spanish, Tamil, Swahili, English, etc.

It’s mega infrastructure which will probably never repay its construction costs. But it’s real. The money didn’t all go to fund riots or to rig elections or to subsidize Bezos’s Flying Phallus. It makes the lives of ordinary people better. Employs Flyover Japanese.

Obviously it’s just all Oriental Bees Buzzing Harmoniously in their Hive. Nothing to see here 🙂

The streamlining of these trains has evolved a lot over the decades. Look nothing like the early bullet trains. Apparently the long elongated nose design reduces shock when entering tunnels at insanely high speeds. Also some features to help with blasting snow out of the way in winter. The amount of snow they get up there is nuts.

Alas, all gone now in a re-development.

Les Deux Magots still has a Tokyo Branch:

http://www.lesdeuxmagots.fr/en/international.html

Again… located on the edge of an area (Shoto) full of very wealthy and very cultivated Japanese housewives with days to while away.

There’s a certain type of Old Money Japanese that’s More French than the French. They’d never be caught dead with an LV Monogram bag where the leather trimmings hadn’t aged into a rich caramel and the whole thing had just the right sagginess. One gets the feeling… just a hint of a feeling, mind you… that they are a little disappointed in the actual French.

“The Moderns” is one of my favorite movies. When I saw the cafe in the OP video, I instantly thought of the scene where the two American girls point at Hemingway and ask “is that F. Scott Fitzgerald?”

I bought my CD of “The Moderns” at a used shop in San Francisco.

Looks like it’s out of print. Used copies can be found at Amazon starting at $20. It’s not even available on Amazon Music, which I thought had everything except the Beatles.

Best of luck. I used to play it at parties because it was unobtrusive, unfamiliar and moody.

https://asylummagazine.ca/

One of the articles is by Conrad Black. So y’all can feel safe about it 😛

Oh… and you might enjoy this recent Tucker Carlson interview:

https://youtu.be/zsGbRNmu4NQ