There are some things worse than death. If you've ever spent an evening with Marty Peretz, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Marty "The Wedding Singer" Peretz drops -- and fumbles -- some names while shopping for luggage in Paris:

I'm a Left Banker, the 6th to be precise. I recall some thirty-odd years ago suggesting to Woody Allen (and Diane Keaton) that we eat at some restaurant on this side of the river. (He was filming "Love and War" then.) And he said, "I never eat on the Left Bank. I once found a cockroach in the bath at the Pont-Royal." Ah, the travails of a Manhattanite. I won't tell you about our picking him and Diane up at their hotel (Plaza Athenee, as I recall) and going to the restaurant (Vivarois, then new to three fork cohort), in a Rolls Royce (his), except that Ed Zwick, fresh out of Harvard and a summer as a TNR intern, was with us. Working with Allen was his apprenticeship.

Marty, the Ugly American, also writes about how North African Muslims have ruined France, and cracks wise about John Edwards' hairdresser. Another 20 years of not subscribing to The New Republic and perhaps I'll be able to tour the Continent with my very own intern.