And now the long trek back home.
Checked out of the hotel (taking our final trip in the tiny elevator), dragged over to the Metro station. The ticket machine wouldn’t take any of our credit cards, nor would it take cash. Plan B: back up to street level to get a taxi. Finally one picked us up, and the ride to where we needed to go didn’t cost an arm and a leg like the surly Aix taxi.
Alas, just like last time in 2007, the Gare du Nord did not disappoint in its display of stunning French ineptitude in running a train station. Hundreds of dreary tourists, butting their heads against ticket machines that never work, or standing in line at ticket counters with dreary rail workers. We budgeted at least an extra hour for this due to our 2007 experience and once again the RATP soaked it right up. Got to the airport, checked in, and were told we didn’t actually have seats on the flight since they’d oversold it (and probably had picked us to get kicked off since we’d purchased months ago and were worth the least money to them, or something). The ticket agent threatrically offered us a thousand dollars to stay one more day and let them book us on Sunday’s flight, which we declined, leading to more theatrics from the agent. Sharon freaked out but Chris knew it would settle out, and by the time we got to the gate itself, we’d already been cleared onto the flight. Guess someone else took the grand. The flight itself went fine. There was no in-seat on-demand movie system which with Chris could spoil himself, so he settled on watching the crap they were showing on the main screens. Which were:
1. Mr. Popper’s Penguins (just kidding, didn’t watch it, but ask Sharon …)
2. Midnight in Paris ( WP / IMDB ) — pretty good! Basically a cinematic romp through many of the early 20th century authors and art world figures you might encounter in high school English or college freshman art history class. Owen Wilson plays a depressed Hollywood screenwriter hack who inexplicably finds himself in 1920s Paris and manages to endear himself to various luminaries of the Golden Age. As usual in a Woody Allen film, the women characters are all one-dimensional muses to the Woody Allen stand-in. A great film to watch coming from a visit in Paris.
3. Arthur ( WP / IMDB ) — Russell Brand and Helen Mirren liven up this remake in what is otherwise generic Hollywood effluent, perhaps written by the Owen Wilson character above.
4. some pathetic Reese Witherspoon rom com — see commentary below for title
That last movie — I tried to ignore it, but I kept going back because I couldn’t figure it out. It is in the running for literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The primary actors (RW, Paul Judd and Owen Wilson, again) seemed to be dazed and working without any script. We didn’t get the movie’s title on the plane, so I was interested in looking it up when we got to the internet again, for no other reason than to see if it even had a writers credit (perhaps one Alan Smithee). So I was stunned when I found that not only had the movie, How Do You Know ( WP / IMDB ), been directed by James L. Brooks, he had written it too! Brooks being famously one of the creators of The Simpsons (alas also now one of those responsible for the continuance of The Simpsons). Maybe the writer begged off the onscreen credit and Brooks took it. Oh and they spent $120M making it! Anyway, too much ink already spilled over a vacuous piece of dreck and a terrible stain on the resumes of all involved. Well, except for Reese Witherspoon, for whom it was just par for the course. I maintain that RW hasn’t been tolerable to watch in anything since Election, and yes, I saw Walk The Line. And in between all those movies, and looking out the window, Chris drafted these last two incredibly long blog entries. It was a 10 hour flight, he had a lot of time on his hands.