I love this stuff

I'm watching The Thin Man. The original in the series. It's the 1930s, people were suffering, and yet this movie was successful enough in its day to spawn at least four sequels. I understand the phenomenon, because I love it, too.

Nick Charles is a former "dick," a working-class stiff with sordid acquaintances, now a "gentleman," thanks to his marriage to the wealthy heiress, Nora. Now he says he helps run her family businesses, but all we ever see our handsome raconteur hero do is drink and charm. His beautiful, elegant wife is better-rounded and has more interests. She drinks and shops. They are usually accompanied by their dog, Asta, who (like Nick and Nora) is just as comfortable in an exclusive club or a seedy gin mill.

Their clothes are gorgeous. Their apartment is sumptuous. Their friends are colorful. Their banter is sexy (and probably shocking for the 1930s). Every now and again they interrupt their wining and dining to solve a murder.

They play. They drink. They make love. They dabble in sordid affairs and murder. They do it all so stylishly. As romantic a fantasy as it seems in 2006, I imagine it was even more irresistible in the 1930s, when so many were unemployed, when unspeakable horrors were taking place in Europe, when the world seemed drab, unimaginative and hopeless. I bet a glorious fantasy in beautiful black and white really hit the spot.

"Yes. But Not With You."

So read the tight, tight, tight t-shirt I saw on a very buxom woman on Michigan Avenue today. We could not only see her rack, her tummy rolls were also very evident. Her jeans were too snug, too. She completed the ensemble with the biggest, heaviest brown shoes I've seen in quite a while -- at least away from a construction site. And yet her t-shirt implies that she feels like a sex object.

I must admit I admire her.

I agonize over my weight. How my clothes fit. How my skin looks. Are my roots showing. And I feel, for the most part, invisible to the opposite sex.

She, on the other hand, is so confident about getting offers that she turns them down in advance. Good for her.

Not me. Not yet, at least.

Traitors! Traitors, all!

I refer, of course, to the legions of Chicago pedestrians walking up and down State Street with white bags, adorned with the Macy's star.

It's not right. Once those were the trademark dark green bags of my beloved Marshall Field's.

I have yet to step foot in Macy's. It's too soon. I simply can't.

I'm told Macy's carries Jones New York, Liz Claiborne, and Eileen Fisher, just as Field's did. Before Macy's took over, I was reassured that the cosmetic lines would remain the same. The clock is still out front. I could still buy Frangoes, if I wanted to.

But I'm not ready for this yet. Not by a longshot.

Forget DisneyLand. To me, Marshall Field's State Street was The Magic Kingdom, The Happiest Place on Earth. Romantic, old architecture. A tradition of service (I was a guest, they always thanked me for waiting, and each purchase was wrapped individually in tissue paper). And Christmas. What will our holiday season be like without Marshall Field's?

Oh, sure, Federated has sent me a new credit card. I haven't even activated it yet.

Of course, I didn't cut it in half, either.

I suppose it's inevitable that I'll give in to the winds of change at some point. But not today.

Strictly within Code

More from my trip to Los Angeles … My best friend and I stayed up almost all night both nights. Gossiping, teasing, laughing and talking, talking, talking. I was surprised and relieved that we are still most definitely us, still completely comfortable with each other, still finishing one another's sentences. If I didn't have this, I would be bereft.

His client-supplied corporate apartment is in an LA suburb, quite a haul from my Hollywood Blvd. hotel. The drive is anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour, depending on traffic and fire-related road closures/reroutes. (California is so incredibly carcentric!) The second night he was so tired and more than a little buzzed, so I insisted he take a nap before he hit the road.

I've dozed off in front of him more than once, but this is the first time the roles were reversed. He doesn't move much when he sleeps. He snores. And his fingers wake up first, twitching a bit before his eyes open.

Still, it was all very chaste. Since we were in Hollywood, it only appropriate that it reminded me of the old Hays Code: "Overseen for many years by what was known as the Hays Code (named for one of the Code's founding fathers, William Harrison Hayes), the Code imposed an almost laughably puritanical set of values on films. Not even married couples could be shown in bed together, unless each had one foot on the floor."

Both of his feet remained shod and most firmly on the floor.