matthewgallaway:

Hey look — a friend of mine is in Paris and saw The Metropolis Case in Shakespeare and Company (aka coolest/oldest English-language bookstore in the world, or something like that)! Which is really gratifying to me not only because much of the book is set in Paris, but also because when I wrote it, I tried to imagine that I was merely translating something that was already written in French, which to me will always be the most beautiful and philosophical of all languages. 

Sweet!

worldpaintings: Maurice Utrillo Place des Abbesses, Montmartre, c. 1931, 73 x 92 cm, private collection.  Maurice Utrillo was the son of a famous French painter Suzanne Valadon. She never revealed the father of her son, so Maurice adopted the paternal family name of a close friend of his mother, a Spanish artist Miguel Utrillo y Morlius, who signed a legal document acknowledging paternity.
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worldpaintings:

Maurice Utrillo

Place des Abbesses, Montmartre, c. 1931, 73 x 92 cm, private collection. 

Maurice Utrillo was the son of a famous French painter Suzanne Valadon. She never revealed the father of her son, so Maurice adopted the paternal family name of a close friend of his mother, a Spanish artist Miguel Utrillo y Morlius, who signed a legal document acknowledging paternity.

Random coincidences and American Express

Before my friends and I caught Charade at the Paramount yesterday afternoon, we wandered around downtown, killing time between the church potluck lunch and the 4:20 screening.  We ended up at the Central library, which I hadn’t visited since high school (I use my neighborhood branch!) where I snagged a copy of As Always, Julia, a collection of letters between Ms. Child and Avis Devoto. I love epistolary stuff!

In their first year of letters — which I had time to read while we sat in the air-conditioned library — Julia mentions visiting assorted places in Paris, including American Express.  Then in the movie, which I had seen years before but only remembered a couple things about, guess where one of the scenes takes place? Yep, the American Express.  I guess I was meant to check out that book and see that movie yesterday.