Getting on on Air France 777 now (1:03 pm), having missed the 10:15 am flight. (Don’t ask.) Before every flight, I cross myself and ask God Almighty not to seat me next to a morbidly obese person. There are at least two whales in line right now, and I’m feeling a very slight apprehension about this. There are thousands of people in Paris who look well-fed or stocky or fat, but I’ve seen no Jabbas. You might expect otherwise in a foodie city like Paris, but nope.
Update: No fatties but Doug Liman is on my plane. He’s returning from a trip to three African countries, at least one or two of which (Rwanda or Uganda or both) proved to be fairly dangerous. He told me was arrested once, and possibly twice. I admire the cojones of anyone willing to risk the worst to order to encounter things unique, surprising, challenging. We talked about the red-clay color of Uganda’s dirt. Liman’s boot laces were untiedcand flopping around as we walked and talked. He was wearing a round-brimmed straw hat.

I need to be fair and and admit that the career-spanning video on Tom Cruise‘s website is nicely cut. (The Air France terminal I’m typing this on won’t let me load links, but it’s www.tomcruise.com.) Now and then some of it makes you grin in admiration for the guy…truly. The one scene in the entire reel that brought a genuine smile to my face? When Cruise’s Joel Goodson spots Rebecca DeMornay‘s prostitute character in the lobby of a plush Chicago hotel and does that little two-shakes-of-an-index-finger wag as I way of saying “I see you, you see me, we’re both here…tah-tah!”