Don't forget Harry, Sally and the cold hard Mexican ceramic tile.

Good points, Louis! There are actually three train stations in Versailles including Versailles Rive Droite; it's a big town. I agree that tourists are always confused. Probably the best thing to do would be to rename Versailles-RG to "Château de Versailles."

Out of curiosity, any reason why this couldn't/shouldn't have been done with rail?

The French use the word correspondance. In New York, transit announcements make a distinction between free transfers (from one subway line to another, or from subway to MTA bus) and connections to other systems that require additional payment. For example, "This is 34th Street, Herald Square. Transfer is available to the B, D, F, V, Q and R trains. Connection is available to the PATH trains." But in everyday conversation, most people just seem to use change.

It may not have been as glamorous, but I liked Fat March: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_March Sadly, the full-episode streaming HD videos are no longer being hosted by ABC.

Tony, fashion mags don't have the form of pornography, they have the substance of it.

So when was the last time the Manolo visited Hoboken? Glamour is in the eye of the beholder, and just as there are still people who find Britney Spears glamorous, there are lots who find Hoboken glamorous.

I've learned to enjoy letting myself go, which is one of the reasons I don't cross-dress as much as I used to. Because if I start letting myself go as a woman, it stops being fantasy, glamour, escape, and it's just life. I figured out that "just life" is much more comfortable without having to wear awkward padding or clothes made for a different body shape, or to hide away parts of myself. Thanks for the thoughtful post, and for a couple of links that I hadn't seen yet. I have the latest Atlantic, but I haven't gotten to it.

Here's my other link, without the parenthesis: http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=8

Thanks for your reply, Kate! The 404 error comes from the TypePad software adding the parenthesis to the end of the URL; if you take it off you can see the page: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/11/46888.html I came to the idea of despair based on Virginia's characterization of glamour as a means of escape. If you're trying to escape through a fantasy you have to be pretty desperate, right? That's the sense of "despair" that I mean - a feeling of being trapped and having no options left. I think that glamour may provide some comfort to people who are desperate, but it's pretty cold comfort, and I think that's why so many "stars" turn to drugs. In thinking about glamour, escape and despair, what came to mind this morning after I read your message was the movie Brazil. In my reading, it's about a man looking for love, but mostly finding just greed and brutality covered with a thin veneer of glamour. I think it's particularly clear in the final sequence.

I guess there are only two ways to puncture glamour: comedy and tragedy. Is the question what kind of comedy and tragedy? Some kind that potential terrorists would be open to. "Who in Iraq is going to think it's funny to poke fun at Saddam's mustache," the student notes, "when the vast majority of Iraqi men themselves have mustaches?" (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/11/46888.html) We've got to do better than that. As I wrote about glamour and transgenderism (http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=8), I think that susceptibility to glamour is only a symptom of a problem, and that problem is despair. Fix the despair and no one will be interested in the glamour. Of course, that's a much more difficult problem.

Very interesting discussion about glamour and horror. It clarifies the appeal of "tranny fatale" movies. I've blogged about it here: http://transblog.grieve-smith.com/?p=66