“Carnage” a movie by Roman Polanski based on a play by Yasmine Reza is about civilization.
The worst attacks against civilization, according to this movie, consist of abandoning a hamster, vomiting in the living room and using our cell phone in public.
I was highly entertained during the first hour, the vomiting is fantastic and I say this without irony, but at the end I dozed off. Probably because I didn’t have time to take a siesta today.

A.O. Scott was rather harsh: ‘I know these people. Why be coy? I am these people. And while these people might well be the parents of a Zachary and an Ethan, the sister of a Zachary would much more plausibly be a Sophie or an Emma than a Courtney. (Courtney? What is this, Beverly Hills? Reality television? Come on!) The elder Cowans and Longstreets would be on a first-name basis from the start so that the “call me Penelope,” “call me Alan” moment would never occur. (In France an invitation to replace the formal vous with the familiar tu might well be part of an encounter like this one, but this is not France.) And someone with Penelope Longstreet’s political views and multicultural concerns would be most unlikely to proclaim herself, without irony, a defender of “Western values.”’

Well, I’m not sure where exactly you can find a Courtney these days, as far as I know I never met a Courtney in my life (if your name is Courtney, please contact me; if you are pregnant and you plan to name your child Courtney please contact me as well) but Mr. Scott has a point, Mz. Reza’s play seems to be more theory than practice.

That doesn’t matter. What’s shocking about “Carnage” is not that aggression lurks behind middle class civilization, what’s shocking is that the worst attack against civilization is vomiting at the parents of the kid who was attacked by your kid.

Two important lessons we can learn from this movie:

Don’t vomit.

Don’t befriend the parents of the friends or enemies of your son.

And don't get me wrong, I really liked this movie.

After many years I went back to Wallse, an Austrian restaurant on West 11th Street.
The food was good, but the maître d’ (a slightly overweight man in his fifties) was obnoxious.
He greeted me with one word: “Yes?”
“My friends made a reservation,” I said.
“Your friends aren’t here yet,” he said. He sounded as if my friends would stand me up.
When my friend came to rescue me the maître d’ gave me a dirty look.
But the Salzburger Nockerl were excellent.

(Read more about Nockerl here.)

Satyajit Das in Wednesday’s Financial Times:

'A sustained period of low rates, such as the one the world is experiencing, makes it difficult to increase the cost of borrowing. Levels of debt encouraged by low rates rapidly become unsustainable when they increase, as is evident in Europe. This reinforces the financial distortions implicit in the policy.
For the moment, policymakers are relying on the advice of actress Tallulah Bankhead: “Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know – I’ve been using it for years.” But reliance on low interest rates, like all addictions, is dangerous. It is also ineffective in addressing the real economic issues.'

(Read the complete article here.)

Ah well, the medicine is making us slowly but steadily sicker.

But in the long run we are all dead, as another economist used to say.

And who is Tallulah Bankhead again?

In the men’s room at Frankfurt Airport I saw a sign: “Please, wash your hands thoroughly.”
Of course, in washrooms in restaurants in New York you can find signs saying: “Employees must wash their hands.” But a traveller is not an employee.
The word “thoroughly” didn’t get out of my head.