In which Mark has the pleasure of introducing another guest blogger: His brother Eric (!)

Introductory note from Mark: After 30 long hours of vacancy, our guest house is occupied again. This week, it's Eric and Paulette. Eric is famous for endlessly imagining that he suffers from dry flaky skin on the soles of his feet, and for being a ridiculously talented renaissance man. Viz: He's not only a professor of biology at an esteemed Ivy League institution, he's also an accomplished artist (with a peculiar affection for sizeable cephalopods). And now, as further evidence of his all-around multi-media virtuosity, Eric has the honor of being only the third person in human history to be a guest blogger for "Our French Files." His narrative – which will begin in mere seconds – offers a lightly fictionalized account of exactly how he and Paulette have been spending their time with us here in the south of France. Here's Eric:


It is Friday, the week of the Cannes Film Festival, and we spent today the same way as we have the last three days. We left our home base in Cotignac driving first along the tight two-lane asphalt roads that wind through the tiny hilltop villages of northern Provence, then finally turning onto a narrow dirt track that ends at a wrought iron gate with massive stone posts: the entrance to Chateau Miraval, sometime home of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Here we dropped off Maddox, purple pillow in hand, and instructing him to toss this into the air. Leaving him behind, we then backed down the track until we found a convenient spot to park off the shoulder and out of sight. We then hiked the quarter mile back to where we had dropped off Maddox and hid ourselves behind some low-lying fig trees and watched what transpired.

Most days this has been nothing. No cars entering or exiting the gate; only the occasional sound of a helicopter, taking off first thing in the morning and then returning late at night, our only affirmation that Brangelina are indeed currently in residence.

Maddox to his credit has been a real trooper, tossing the pillow repeatedly into the air and counting off each catch in binary ("1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, ...") as if he were a human computer. We had considered placing this rather arduous task upon the slightly more doughty shoulders of young Jasper, but precociousness seems more precocious in a four-year-old than an eight-year-old.

As I said, most days nothing has transpired, and we have driven back home with our tired little nephew curled in Quincy’s lap, already asleep and his stiff arms protruding rather pathetically outward like two of the local thick-crusted baguettes. But as I say Maddox has been a real trooper and, like us, returns inspired each morning to take up his post. Ah, the bright hope that springs eternal in a young man’s breast! And today it finally paid off. The pillow tossing, please understand, is nothing but an attention-grabber, just the sort of thing to induce a chauffeur-driven Lamborghini to slow down, and an all-too-well-known passenger to roll down her tinted window and inquire as to the boy’s provenance. At first Maddox does not pause in his well-rehearsed task, continuing to robotically count ever upwards ("... 1111101, 1111110, 1111111, 10000000, 10000001, ...") just long enough to bring a ample-lipped A-list celebrity to full attention. This boy knows binary! He will be a good influence on my brood!

Celebrities know how to seize the moment, as well as a young boy it turns out. Maddox was swept up into the sports car, the day's trip to Cannes forgotten or postponed, and the car with scarcely a sound retreated back up the hillside, past fields of low-lying grape vines, terraced olive groves, until it disappeared behind the gate of the courtyard of the elegantly elephantine Chateau Miraval.

Then there was nothing for us to do but to wait. Which we did in the nearby town of Correns, drinking at a café that serves only organic wine, in our case a most pleasing and delicate Rose, crisp as an apple and light as spring sunshine. Jasper, not to be outdone in seizing the joy of the day, drank a delicious organic chocolate milk shake and ate some of the sweetest pastries ever concocted by a French patisserie. Mark paid for it all with some antique and now highly sought-after French francs. At about eight in the evening, just as the daylight began to fade, we returned to where we last saw Maddox. He was there already, awaiting us, chewing on a stalk of wild fennel and seated on the same pillow we left with him.

The boy was tired, sweaty, and dirty, and dearly in need of a bath. But first he must tell us all of his miraculous day inside the gates of celebrity. And indeed he had much to tell. There was a never-ending film reel titled “Notice to the Academy” that showed scenes of Angelina Jolie from her star turns in Tomb Raider and Beowolf, and which elegantly made the point that some stars have had their performances digitally enhanced to good effect well before Avatar took the world by storm. Then there was the actual suit of armor that Brad Pitt wore in Troy. Our little nephew even got to try it on! A little known Hollywood secret: the armor for all its realism is made of plastic and is surprisingly light; all credit to the acting acumen of the estimable Mr. Pitt for giving it the appearance of weighty metal. Then, finally, Maddox informed us, there were the hours of backbreaking labor down in the vineyards, working shoulder to shoulder with the other juvenile members of the expatriate Hollywood horde. The gnarled vines are trained low to the ground and children, it turns out, are of just the right height to assist in the pruning. Hard work no doubt, but the children do it with nary a peep of protest, inspired by the promise that they will all, one day, appear in an upcoming advertisement for the United Colors of Benetton!

Yes, our nephew Maddox is now immortalized on the internet! And we as well just for knowing him. Some vacation! Check it out at http//www.maddox.r.traveler.joie.com/home.


Afterword from Mark: Hmmm. You'll recall that when I was introducing Eric earlier, I characterized his narrative as "lightly fictionalized." Upon further reflection, I realize that I used the word "lightly" loosely, and more-or-less as a synonym for "almost entirely." There are two things, though, that are kind of true: (1) Eric did have the bizarre idea that it might be fun to teach Maddox how to count in binary code, and (2) Maddox was scarily quick to pick up this almost entirely useless and socially debilitating skill. Thanks Eric.