ACULTURAL LITERACY

For the past year or so, whenever I asked my good friend Currado Malaspina what he'd been up to I always received the same deflecting response:

Pas grand chose

(not too much).

Little did I know that the ever-enterprising Malaspina was consumed in the singular task of trying to write a best-seller.

In France there is no real market for the traditional American bodice ripper. In a country whose literary tradition includes highfalutin filth by the likes of Isadore Ducasse, Choderlos de Laclos and the Marquis du Sade, minor shades of gray have little or no appeal.

Currado Malaspina is determined to change all that.

With the recent publication of Les Petite Morceaux de Gratitude, (inexplicably the English language version will be called The Flame of Philomène) Currado is attempting to reconfigure centuries of French sexual mores.
  

In the US, Malaspina likes to observe, sex, like sports, is enjoyed more as a spectator than as a participant. Fantasy is preferred over achievement and fetishism is more of a fad than an inclination. Knowing that with globalization popular culture trends exclusively toward America he keyed his book with a more repressive bias anticipating a French turn toward puritanism.

Whether his bet pays off is of little consequence since he has optioned the book to Burbank-based Duchateau Productions with several big names already attaching themselves to the project.

FITNESS IN FRANCE

Leave it to my buddy across the pond, Currado Malaspina to find the only health club in the EU to allow nudity. Modeled on the ancient Spartan ritual of Gymnopaedia, members are encouraged to do their paces while fully peeled.

Famous for their Kouretes classes, close cousin to Pilates but a bit more martial, this unusual fitness center attracts an eccentric yet devoted clientele.

Although there are two similar gyms here in California - one in Humboldt County catering to the pot-bellied pot growing community the other in L.A. buried in the canyons of Bel-Air not far from the Getty Museum - neither one, Malaspina insists, can hold a fisherman's candle to the one in France. (Currado stipulated that for discretion's sake I withhold the name of his birthday-suited spa as it is frequented by several well-known members of his beloved Socialist party). 

The highly unorthodox atmosphere has a practical component that's hard to refute. Unlike conventional gyms, this one doesn't need scores of high-definition television screens bleating frantically from every corner. Why bother when there are better distractions available while performing one's rote exertions?

All the dangling and drooping aside, it's been noted elsewhere that exercising in the rough is better for the circulation, creates boatloads of free-radicals and greatly enhances the production of vital digestive enzymes.

Though it's unlikely that this will grow into an enduring trend there are already indications that the popularity of unclad calisthenics has yet to peak. 

Can bald-ass Zumba be very far behind?