Thanks! I am a huge Francophile and I envy you for living in Paris. Because I'm ancient I will print this out and carry it through customs and take your advice!

I have gotten much hatred on this thread because to my mind China seems like a not too fun place to visit. So we're going to Paris instead. We're going to be housesitting for a friend of mine, who lives in the 6th, St-Germain-de-Pres. Do you have any recommendations? I'm sure he'll leave us with a huge list of…

Can I ask why you think that? I am actually a nice, decent person, interested in the world and those around me, I'm conversational in about nine languages at this point (including Catalan!) and am the godfather to five children although to my regret we have no children of our own. I believe in that adage that we…

I wanted to stay away from Beijing and Shanghai and Hong Kong, because we already live in a huge cosmopolitan city, and yet I don't want to fall into an open-pit cesspool, and we have no money, and I have an old college roommate who lives in Paris and is living La Vie en Rose and he's going to be away and basically…

My husband and I live in NYC so every day is an interesting adventure. We haven't taken a vacation in three years. He recently proposed going somewhere and I said, "Why don't we go to China? It seems to be the future and I speak a little Chinese." (Two of my coworkers and one of my employees are native speakers of…

I am a tall (6'4") white gay male writer. Seriously, it's how I make my living. It's more like journalism, but in my spare time I write fiction, and I try to write from the point of view of someone who is not a tall white male gay writer.

I love Michelle Obama and the girls (not that I've ever met any of them) but I wouldn't wish the job of the Presidency on anyone. George W. Bush seems to have taken it in stride but you can see it's taking its toll on President Obama. Imagine having to sit in the same room with...I won't go on, at the risk of libeling…

But what is she doing? Is that a pool behind her? Maybe she's leaning on a beach chair? Most people don't wear suits to the pool?

Exactly. The Starr Report came out in 1998. In 2016 there will be voters who weren't alive then, and a fairly large cohort who were in grade school and are now struggling with massive student debt and widescale under- and unemployment. Not to mention that the world is much more unstable now than it was in 1998. As an…

You should try to catch the old reruns if you can. There was one where a nice young woman lived at home forever, saved and saved, and she ended up going for a condo in a new building that hadn't been finished yet going up on Brickell Avenue in Miami. It was filmed in 2008. It was like watching footage of people…

I saw one where the couple wanted to be near the Managua airport (!) because they love to entertain (don't they all?) and it would it easier for all their friends and family members to visit them. I got the feeling that when their sons- and daughters-in-law got the news that they were moving off to Nicaragua there…

I have never been to Toronto but with all these shows, and they all seem to be based in Toronto, I feel like it must be the size of Texas because otherwise at this point I must have seen every house that's ever changed hands. Also there's usually a train/tram thing chugging along in the background, which leads me to…

Also, if you had call waiting, you had to remember to disable it by dialing something, *70 I think, because if you didn't and someone called in you'd lose your Internet access, which took you a long time to get onto in the first place.

That would be the copy editorial manicurist. The editorial manicurist listens to what you say and then repeats it back to you, changing some wording and structure for clarity.

Do you live on the East Coast? Boston, New York and DC all have thriving Vietnamese communities, often in the suburbs. I used to get bahn mi 30 years ago in Northern Virginia, around the Ballston Metro stop.

I didn't bother reading the criteria, because they are meaningless, but New York is one of the gayest cities on earth. If only 5% of New York is gay, and that, to me, seems like a low estimate, that's over 400,000 people just within the five boroughs. About 20% of the residents of my Manhattan apartment building are…

Two people in the entire city wanted to bring them to NYC, Mike Bloomberg and Dan Doctoroff. Oh maybe three: Donal Trump probably wanted them because they are classy and a real estate scam on the highest level masquerading as "quality" investment in infrastructure.

Thank you for the cake mix info! I "bake" a lot (using cake mixes in all kinds of strange ways; I am the Sandra Lee of my circle of friends, except that my stuff is edible and enjoyable) and I always thought cake mix would theoretically last forever, unless worms or something got into it. Cake mix in my house lasts…

You should read Nikil Saval's Cubed. It's a history of the office and while that sounds like a dull topic the book is fascinating. Among many of its virtues it explains, in-depth, why so many office workers ended up in cubicles. I will give a summary, from my understanding: the road to Hell is paved with good…

Me too! I assumed it was cleverly photoshopped in to make some kind of subtle reference to the UCSB nut (the button he's wearing definitely looks like a 'shop) because what does that have to do with same-sex marriage but I think it's real. I guess he has many issues that he needs to address, both on the campaign trail…