Gay Paree

It was a beautiful June morning on the Left Bank. Seventy degrees and breezy under a light rain. I had just dodged a man in a black duster -- sharp silver claws, black nail polish, a top hat, a Victorian cravat, and a red-eyed jackal walking stick -- a real mama's boy, who cockroached into the underground outside the Jardin du Luxembourg before I could unshoulder my camera. The street was mostly devoid of cars, except for the occasional Smart car skittering through at a cross street. Drums in the distance and the hee-haw of police sirens. I looked up to see a phalanx of Paris's finest, surfing a tsunami of humanity, three million strong, bearing down on me from the east, filling the wide boulevard -- orange and yellow balloons and a band, blasting away from the flatbed of a semi nudging its blunt snout slowly through the revelers. Atop the cab, Adonis wields a pride flag like a broadsword, slashing the air in surreal semaphore: We're here. We're queer. Get used to it. It was a Saturday, and for the next six hours, the world's largest gay pride parade would hold the City of Lights in its thrall.

The good stuff:

serendipity

lagniappe

Stonehenge

old T-shirts

the cool side of the pillow

the warm side of the bed

onion rings

calamari

magnifying glasses

bangers and mash