"The man who is not a husband, father, and soldier is not a man."

I took these photos of the movie "A Special Day," which is playing on The Criterion Channel (in its current tribute to Marcello Mastroianni). Begin around 53:23 to view just this segment, which has Mastroianni's character poking around inside the apartment of Sophia Loren's character and finding her fascism scrapbook. (It's 1938, in Rome.)

"She’s an interesting woman. I admire her choices. But I married Sophia Loren. She turned into Jean-Claude Van Damme."

Said Anthony Bourdain, quoted in this long New Yorker article, "Anthony Bourdain's Moveable Feast/Guided by a lusty appetite for indigenous culture and cuisine, the swaggering chef has become a travelling statesman."

The turning into Jean-Claude Van Damme has to do with jujitsu. And the couple broke up.

Bourdain had an earlier wife. He broke up with her because of television:

“She identified television early on as an existential threat to the marriage,” Bourdain said. “I felt like the whole world was opening up to me. I’d seen things. I’d smelled things. I desperately wanted more. And she saw the whole thing as a cancer.” If you watch episodes of “A Cook’s Tour,” you can sometimes spot [the first wife, Nancy] Putkoski hovering at the edge of the frame. She had no desire to be on camera. She told me recently that her ideal degree of fame would be that of a Supreme Court Justice: “Almost nobody knows what you look like, but you always get the reservation you want.”

There are easier ways to get a reservation, but if you do use the become-a-Supreme-Court-Justice method, make sure to be one of the liberal ones. 

And, also on the subject of television, I was interested in this:

“Parts Unknown” films two seasons a year. Even first-class travel can be punishing after a while, and Bourdain acknowledges that although he may still behave like a young man, he isn’t one. “I think you’re officially old at sixty, right?” he told me, soon after his birthday. “The car starts falling apart.” However, TV stars forge bonds with their audience through habitual exposure, and it can feel risky to take a break. “It’s a bit like ‘Poltergeist,’ ” Nigella Lawson, who was Bourdain’s co-host on “The Taste,” told me. “You get sucked into the TV and you can never get out.”

By the way, I love Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential," and I was fascinated to learn that it was inspired by one of my favorite books,  “Down and Out in Paris and London” (by George Orwell). The New Yorker quotes Orwell's statement that cooks are “the most workmanlike class, and the least servile.” Here's the whole passage from Orwell:

Undoubtedly the most workmanlike class, and the least servile, are the cook. They do not earn quite so much as waiters, but their prestige is higher and their employment steadier. The cook does not look upon himself as a servant, but as a skilled workman; he is generally called 'un ouvrier' which a waiter never is. He knows his power--knows that he alone makes or mars a restaurant, and that if he is five minutes late everything is out ofgear. He despises the whole non-cooking staff, and makes it a point of honour to insult everyone below the head waiter. And he takes a genuine artistic pride in his work, which demands very great skill. It is not the cooking that is so difficult, but the doing everything to time. Between breakfast and luncheon the head cook at the Hôtel X would receive orders for several hundred dishes, all to be served at different times; he cooked few of them himself, but he gave instructions about all of them and inspected them before they were sent up. His memory was wonderful. The vouchers were pinned on a board, but the head cook seldom looked at them; everything was stored in his mind, and exactly to the minute, as each dish fell due, he would call out, 'Faites marcher une côtelette de veau' (or whatever it was) unfailingly. He was an insufferable bully, but he was also an artist. It is for their punctuality, and not for any superiority in technique, that men cooks are preferred to women.

The waiter's outlook is quite different. He too is proud in a way of his skill, but his skill is chiefly in being servile. His work gives him the mentality, not of a workman, but of a snob. He lives perpetually in sight of rich people, stands at their tables, listens to their conversation, sucks up to them with smiles and discreet little jokes. He has the pleasure of spending money by proxy. Moreover, there is always the chance that he may become rich himself, for, though most waiters die poor, they have long runs of luck occasionally. At some cafés on the Grand Boulevard there is so much money to be made that the waiters actually pay the patron for their employment. The result is that between constantly seeing money, and hoping to get it, the waiter comes to identify himself to some extent with his employers. He will take pains to serve a meal in style, because he feels that he is participating in the meal himself.

I remember Valenti telling me of some banquet at Nice at which he had once served, and of how it cost two hundred thousand francs and was talked of for months afterwards. 'It was splendid, mon p'tit, mais magnifique! Jesus Christ! The champagne, the silver, the orchids--I have never seen anything like them, and I have seen some things. Ah, it was glorious!'

'But,' I said, 'you were only there to wait?'

'Oh, of course. But still, it was splendid.'

The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, 'What an overfed lout'; he is thinking, 'One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.' He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day--they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafés. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.

I assume we're dealing with burst photography, so the question is: Why choose this particular instant?

Everyone was just talking about that wonderful photograph that Christopher Horner captured at a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game last Saturday. A father's arm stops a baseball bat the instant before it would have hit the face of his son, who seems to have been distracted by his smart phone, and all the people around are flinching in various interesting ways. It's a wonderful composition, and I assume Horner used a camera that shot a burst of photos that made part of the art the choosing of the precise instant in which the various elements were, in his view, most meaningful and exciting.

Now, here's a fascinating frame shot by AP's Jacquelyn Martin, published in USAToday, documenting the state dinner last night in the White House, where the Obamas honored Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau:



My first thought was: This frame was chosen for the tilt of Michelle Obama's head and the expression on her face. Is there a Sophia Loren vibe?



It must be that we were intended to feel the lure of the age-old drama of sly/anxious woman-on-woman inspection. But no. I step back from that precipice. I'm not skiing down that slope.

I scan the whole frame. I think: This is a very odd picture, with President Obama exiting into the right margin, his face already out of the frame. The absence of the most important face might reinforce the idea that this frame is all about Michelle. She's the center of human drama. What's going on in her head?

But settle in. Calm down. Obama's striding off-screen is symbolic. The man is in the act of walking out of the Presidency. Once you notice that — ah! — you see it: Another face! Peeping over the shoulders of those military men. We've been talking about the photo frame, but within that frame there's another frame, like a window into the room, and in that window there's the face of a man, eyeing the interior, like he's watching and thinking about how to climb in. Of course, it's not really a window frame. It's a picture frame. But there's that face. The man who wants in.



Bill Clinton!

UPDATE: The NYT has the same photo but with the complete figure of Obama in the frame (except for the end of his foot). So the picture we've been talking about was cropped, with Obama's face deliberately excluded. The full-width picture makes a very different impression, with Obama and Justin Trudeau striding forward, in step, each with one long leg extended.

What do Bob Dylan, Toni Morrison, John Glenn, and Madeleine Albright have in common?

Obama is giving them all a medal — the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Speaking for freedom, Bob's got an old song called "I Shall Be Free." It says:

Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up
He said, “My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?”
I said, “My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren”
(Put ’em all in the same room with Ernest Borgnine!)

It's not a slow jam, but like that Obama's slow jam the other day, it got that idea that sexual stimulation is what the country needs. (Speaking of old, there's that old Woody Allen joke: "I ... interestingly had, uh, dated ... a woman in the Eisenhower Administration ... briefly ... and, uh, it was ironic to me 'cause, uh . . . 'cause I was trying to, u-u-uh, do to her what Eisenhower has been doing to the country for the last eight years.)

Bob's most famous reference to the President is in "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)":

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Lest you think that was sexy-naked, the year was 1965, and the President was LBJ.

Live-blogging the Golden Globes.

1. Oh, why not? Ricky Gervais is here, hosting, making jokes about the tininess of his penis and how it looks big in his small hands where it usually is. That might sound funnier if it weren't 7 pm (Central Time) on network TV. Then, here's Nicole Kidman looking great with red hair and a light pink dress featuring prominent tiny nipples. She reminds us about Haiti, then hands out the best supporting actress award to Mo'nique, who is overdraped in gold satin and fabulously made up with ultralong eyelashes. Mo'nique loves God and all the other actors in her movie "Precious."

2. Most of the women are wearing asymmetrical dresses, and Julianna Margulies, who won the TV actress award, looked like she got confused getting into the straps of hers. Michael C. Hall, who won the TV actor award, has on a wool stocking cap for some reason. As a tribute to victims of the Haitian earthquake? I don't know. [ADDED: I'm told Hall has cancer. I'm sorry.]

3. The set is orange. I'm tired of looking at orange. Is it supposed to be "golden"? Hey, suddenly: Cher! She looks statuesque and hourglassy. It's the song award. Paul McCartney is nominated and there, but he doesn't win.

4. Meryl Streep wins best [comedy/musical] actress for "Julie and Julia." She's shrouded in a big black dress clamped on with a thick buckled belt. But she has one naked shoulder left out of the shroud, so she's on the asymmetry kick with everyone else. She pretends she didn't remember what she wanted to say and stammers her way into a tribute to her mother and a mini-breakdown over all the suffering in the world.

5. Drew Barrymore gets a TV actress award for "Grey Gardens." She's wearing the best outfit for the day, but it's quite silly, covered in crystal pimples with a glitter hedgehog at one shoulder and the opposite hip.

6. Samuel L. Jackson introduces "a real-life movie star" — Sophia Loren. She's got a beautiful symmetrical dress. It's black, outlining her famous breasts and nipping in at her should-be-equally-famous waist, and it has sheer sleeves that are shaded at the shoulders with a sprinkling of black beads for an ombre effect. She gives the foreign film award to "The White Ribbon."

7. "Mad Man" is the best TV show. The best TV actress is Chloe Sevigny (for "Big Love"). Cool. I like her. She's wearing an insane widely-ruffled mauve dress and she's gasping about ripping it, not that she ripped it in any kind of an interesting way.

8. Halle Berry looks sharp and sleek in a tight black dress with little cap sleeves and a giant plunge down the chest. Her hair is crisply modern too — short and sticking up on top. She gives the supporting movie actor award to Christoph Waltz, who was so wonderful as the Nazi in "Inglourious Basterds."

9. "Marty eats, drinks, and sleeps film. I hear there are videos on the internet of Marty having sex with film." It's Robert DeNiro, talking about Martin Scorsese, who's getting one of these lifetime awards. Cool clip show, reminding me, among other things, of how much I love...  "After Hours"... and "King of Comedy"....

10. Oh, they love Jodie Foster. She's wearing a plain black dress, that makes it's nod to asymmetry with a slit up the left leg. She's not giving an award, just presenting one of the films. Gervais, sipping from that beer he's got at the lectern: "I like a drink as much as the next man... unless the next man... is Mel Gibson." Here's Gibson, acting drunk, for fun... supposedly. The category is director, and the award goes to ... suspense... James Cameron. He doesn't say "I'm the king of  the world." He tells us he's got to "pee something fierce."

11. The best TV show is "Glee." That's nice, I guess. "This is for everybody who got a wedgie in high school."

12. Ah, we're almost done. It's the best comedy/musical award. "The Hangover." Mike Tyson is involved. Strange!

13. Arnold Schwarzenegger! The actor. It's as if that whole thing about him being governor was just some crazy dream. He presents "Avatar," which looks really annoying. Then Mickey Rourke comes out — in a cowboy hat — to do the drama actress award. It's Mickey because he won best actor last year, not because he's the height of Hollywood glamour, which he's not. The winner is Sandra Bullock, and Mickey looks really disappointed. Sandra is wearing a very filmy, very purple dress.

14. Sally Hutton announces the drama actor award. She's wearing a nutty short dress. It's Robert Downey Jr.! I've always loved him. He's got a whole standup routine going. He's not going to thank anyone... but he does. "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms." [ADDED: Oops. That was the comedy/musical actor. Hmm. Sherlock Holmes is comedy? Or was there music?]

15. The best drama actor is actually Jeff Bridges. The presenter was the lovely Kate Winslet, who's wearing a simple black dress with one thick vertical strap on the right side. Asymmetry. Jeff gets a standing O. Why? Because he's The Dude? "You're really screwing up my 'under appreciated' status," he says.

16. The best drama movie — presented by Julia Roberts, who thought it was cute to tell her kids to go to bed — is "Avatar." James Cameron warns us that now he has peed, so he's going to blabber. He loves his job. We have the best job. "Give it up for yourselves." He says that twice. Because "that's the most amazing thing." Jeesh. "'Avatar' asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the earth."

17. And us to bed!

"At a state dinner in 1996, low decolletage wasn't merely sexy or daring; it was a political trap for a president known to have a roving eye."

"Clinton was hosting a state dinner for Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. The voluptuous Italian actress Sophia Loren was a guest and she arrived with her magnificent cleavage framed in an ivory evening gown by Giorgio Armani. As she made her way through the receiving line, media observers paid close attention to Clinton's gaze, waiting to see whether it would waver -- even the slightest -- from where it belonged to where it was most emphatically being drawn. Reports indicated that Clinton maintained steely eye contact. But no guest should really put the leader of the free world to such a test of willpower."

So putting her breasts right under President Clinton's eyes was, in Robin Givhan's opinion, a deliberate political trap.

It was so out there when Loren did it. (Photo at the link.) Is it okay to talk about it? Is it okay to talk about the other women who have followed in Loren's bra cups footsteps? Thanks to Robin Givhan for giving me new confidence in straight talk about breasts and politics.

Sophia and her older man.

Sophia Loren's husband Carlo Ponti just died -- at the age of 94.

Ponti was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren, who was almost 25 years younger than he, in about 1950.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret in spite of huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 -- two male attorneys took their place. The couple only found out about their marriage when the news was broken by a society columnist.

Well, this is an interesting story problem for math class, but I'm just going to look up Sophia Loren's birth date. It's September 20, 1934. She was 16 when they met in 1950. He was 38. She was 23 when she married the 45-year-old Ponti. Now, he is dead, and she is 72.

Remember this cover of Life Magazine?

That was from 1966. It was about a year before Twiggy entered our brains and made Sophia look fat. Click on the image to see a page of all the Life Magazine photos from that year. I remember them so well. Everyone read Life then. On the covers: Bobby Kennedy, Ian Fleming, Melina Mercouri, Jean-Paul Belmondo, "LSD Art," a White House wedding, "young black militants," Claudia Cardinale, "Mod male fashions," Julie Christie, Elizabeth Taylor, TV's Batman, Jackie Kennedy, Louis Armstrong, Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. So long ago. So vivid....

Condolences to the beautiful Sophia.

And I love the image of two male lawyers getting married in 1957!