In my run this morning (quite crisp but invigorating, thank you), I realized that France is indeed a nation of taste. There are parts of their culture you might not like, but you nonetheless have to admit that in architecture, art, clothes, food, music, and all things stylistic the French do know what's what. They reek of good taste, and nearly all of them spend money like there's no tomorrow to acquire as much tasteful overpriced oddly-designed unreliable French-manufactured crap as they can. But I digress from my paean to French good taste. I don't know what it is about the French upbringing, maybe they send all the kids to finishing school, but the fact is that every Parisian has highly developed and consistently good taste. Maybe they have some sort of a national finesse test everyone has to pass. The French taste in clothes, women, cars, houses, furniture, food, movies drink...all impeccable. About the only place where the French have lost it (or never had it) is popular music (viz Barbara) and television (Baywatch is #1; they are still enthralled by the 'price is right'). Anyway, unlike most sensible people on this wintery December day, I went running. Now, just being a runner makes you suspect in Paris, even if you did start at 1 PM. No true European exercises: this goes double for the Parisians. After all the wine and cigarettes and night life, who has the energy to bound across a busy street, or down a quiet alley? Etrangeres, that's who. To make me doubly suspect, my running garb consists of a short-sleeve lavendar shirt, red shorts, white athletic socks, and red Nikes. So I'm quite a sight among the locals who are mainly bundled up in blacks and browns. And that's where the good taste comes in. I've always been kind of proud of my red Nikes. Got them new, great price, very well made. For some reason, the Factory Outlet where I bought them had crate after crate of these factory-fresh red Nikes. I liked them immediately because they made a statement, and were something like 70% off. But all this was tarnished a bit by the intermittent jeering from my wife, Jennifer. Since she makes fun of many things I do, I bear her no mind. Yet, I have always been the tiniest bit crestfallen whenever she told me to not dare wear those Nikes when she was going to be seen with me. Well, of course the Parisians this afternoon didn't have a much better reaction to mes sneakers rouges. In at least five cases, old women stared maniacally at my shoes as I ran by, with their mouths screwed up in something of a scowl. Parisians who wouldn't dream of keeping eye contact for more than 10 milliseconds were staring fixedly at my shoes for quite a while, not realizing the social gaff they were committing. I'm beginning to think of my shoes as a kind of rhorschak (sp?) test for intollerance, anal retentiveness, jingoism, xenophobia, etc. And from today's run, it's clear that most Parisians would flunk this test.