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Jolie takes some strange turns in Hollywood’s version of Washington


It’s only a movie! That’s what you tell yourself when Hollywood puts Washington on the screen and bungles the geography. “Salt” spent several days filming here last year and achieves a decent Beltway verisimilitude. Sure, you groan when Angelina Jolie orders a cabbie to “U Street,” then alights at her Kalorama-like home. Or when she leaps from the L’Enfant Promenade overpass and Chiwetel Ejiofor shouts, “She’s heading south on Route 1!” (It’s 395, man.) They’re minor flubs compared


with Jolie exiting her apartment building at a corner marked Sixth and Indiana. No way! In real life, that’s the wide-open intersection shared by the D.C. Superior Court and an Au Bon Pain. Why change the signs? Turns out the neighborhood scene wasn’t shot in Washington at all, we learned from Josh Friedman of the D.C. Film Office — but in New York. It just looked Kalorama-ish. The street signs apparently were added to make sense of the next scene, when Jolie runs into the Archives Metro station, near the real Sixth and Indiana. Or something like that.


THE RELIABLE SOURCE P


Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger The art of the gift


resident Obama is getting smarter at diplomatic giving. His gifts to Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting


Washington this week from London, displayed a level of savvy that was lacking the last time he exchanged presents with a British leader. Last year, then-Prime Minister Gordon


Brown gave Obama a pen holder carved from a British warship. The president, on the other hand, was pilloried in the British press for his offering: 25 classic American movies — which turned out to be incompatible with DVD players in the United Kingdom. And the two toy helicopters for Brown’s sons were dismissed by pundits as an afterthought. (Obama’s iPod offering to the queen got a thumbs down, too.) The pressure was on to get it right this time: Obama gave Cameron a signed color lithograph by American artist Ed Ruscha, one of leaders of the Pop art movement. The piece, “Column With Speed Lines,”was selected for the red, white and blue colors matching both countries’ flags. Samantha Cameron,who is expecting a baby in September and didn’t make the trip, got a basket of baby goodies. The prime minister’s kids weren’t neglected: Nancy,6, received a silver necklace with eight White House charms; Elwen, 4, got a custom D.C. United jersey, reports our colleague Michael Shear.


WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY


In “Salt,” Angelina Jolie navigates a Washington unfamiliar to locals.


LOVE, ETC.  Talking some more: Bristol


Palin, who gave yet another interview to Us Weekly about her engagement to Levi Johnston, under the sexy headline “My mom doesn’t approve” — though actually if you read the story, Sarah Palin seems not unsupportive, just unpsyched. (Bristol’s comment came as she denied speculation that the Palins paid off Levi: “My mom doesn’t really approve of it, so how is that possible?”) But will the ex-guv come to her daughter’s wedding? “I think she will.” Really, who needs a reality show if you can just share via weekly


usmagazine.com videos? Oh, but spoiler alert! Levi’s sister Mercede isn’t invited to the wedding.


HEY ISN’T THAT . . . ?  James Gandolfini dining


at Zola Tuesday night — same place, actually, where the frequent USO volunteer dined when he was here in March. The town’s full of restaurants, Mr. Soprano! Jeans and a black shirt. Lots of appetizers, then the bass.  Sam Waterston jawboning outside the Russell Building. Light gray suit, striped tie. Was doing the celebvocacy thing for Common Cause and Public Campaign — one-on-one visits with lawmakers arguing for voluntary public financing for congressional campaigns.


Of course, Obama didn’t pick up the gifts himself: The White House referred us to the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol, which oversees all gifts exchanged with foreign leaders and assists in finding exactly the right item for the right person (most of the time). The office didn’t get back to us, so we don’t know why Ruscha was selected —although he did donate a work to the president’s 2008 campaign. The Obamas, by the way, received some cool


stuff, too. Cameron reciprocated with another piece of art, “Twenty First Century City,” by British graffiti artist Ben Eine.An official from 10 Downing Street told a very surprised Eine that the prime minister’s wife was a fan and asked if he would donate a painting. “It’s not the kind of recognition I seek or get


every day, but Cameron seems quite a positive kind of guy and Obama’s a dude,” said Eine, according to London’s Guardian. “I would probably have had issues if it had been for Bush.” In addition to Eine’s work, Cameron gave the


first lady candles from London-based perfumer Miller Harris; Malia and Sasha got pink and purple Wellington boots.


CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES The president also gave the prime minister a piece of art — a lithograph. GOT A TIP ? E-MAIL U S A T RELIABLESOURCE@WASHP OST . COM. FOR THE LA TEST SCOOPS, VISIT WA SHINGTONP OST . COM/RELIABLESOUR CE BOOK WORLD


The cocktail hour: A delightful sip from a more proper past “W


by Michael Dirda


hen evening quickens in the street,” writes Bernard De- Voto, “comes a pause in the


day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain. But it cannot make the grade alone. It needs help; it needs, my brethren, all the help it can get. It needs a wife (or some other charming woman) of attuned impulse and equal impatience and maybe two or three friends, but no more than two or three. These gathered together in a softly lighted room and, with them what it needs most of all, the bounty of al- cohol. Hence the cocktail.” Bernard DeVoto’s “The


Hour,” first published in 1948, is a paean to the re- storative powers of a quiet drink at the end of the work- ing day. Today, it reads very much as a period piece, di- rected at male readers, argu- ing fiercely that there are really only two adult bever- ages worth caring about: straight whis- key (rye, bourbon or scotch) and martinis made with gin and dry vermouth. Fans of the television show “Mad Men” will feel right at home. DeVoto heartily loathes fruity concoc- tions, especially those based on rum (such as the daiquiri), and, as Daniel Handler notes in his splendid introduc- tion, the word “vodka” never even ap- pears in the book. Neither is there any


THE HOUR A Cocktail Manifesto By Bernard DeVoto Tin House. 127 pp. $16.95


discussion of wine and beer, nor of such popular summer standards as the gin- and-tonic or the Tom Collins. In fact, apart from the martini, DeVoto views mixed drinks as abominations: “Put it this way. Maybe you like a good Burgun- dy, or a Pouilly, or a Champagne. How would you like it mixed with root beer and Veg-8?” In short, the author of “The Hour” is a purist. Martinis must always be prepared just before serving, and any leftover in a pitcher should be thrown out once the first round has been poured. A smidgen of lemon rind is acceptable but not essen- tial. The recommended proportion of gin to vermouth should be 3.7 to 1, though 4 to 1 may be al- lowed in the case of those who have trouble with frac- tions. Like many right-thinking people, I myself incline toward W.H. Auden’s view that the vermouth bottle should simply be waved over the tumbler of Tanque- ray. But then — horrors! — I do sip the gin on the rocks: Being of a meditative char- acter, I like to study the ice cubes while slowly jiggling the glass. DeVoto and I do agree that all you need for hors d’oeuvres is “a couple of good cheeses and a couple


of kinds of good crackers. . . . Make one of them ordinary American cheddar, as snappy as it comes, and the other a fairly high one.” To our loss, we no longer refer to a drink as “art’s sunburst of imagined de- light becoming real” or “the reconcilia- tion that knits up the raveled day.” In “The Hour,” DeVoto repeatedly aims for such poetic flourishes, as when he speaks of “a moroseness of tired and buffeted


DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau


THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010


BRITISH EMBASSY


Prime Minister David Cameron gave President Obama “Twenty First Century City,” a piece by British graffiti artist Ben Eine.


DAYNA SMITH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST WHAT’LL YOU HAVE? Bernard DeVoto argued for straight whiskey or a martini, and eschewed fruity drinks.


men.” We are more austere writers now. Still, as an amateur historian of the West, DeVoto won a 1948 Pulitzer Prize for “Across the Wide Missouri” and for 20 years graced Harper’s Magazine with a column called the Easy Chair. It was, as they say, another time. At one point, De- Voto stops at his club, which he describes as “stuffy”: “Tiptoeing across the almost dark cav- ern of the lounge (at the hour all lamps should be shaded and only a few of them lit, for if the body is in shadow the soul will the sooner turn toward the sun), I take my drink to a chair so big that one’s head cannot be seen above its back, by a window that faces a cross-town street. We are near enough the avenue to hear the traffic diminishing. This is an hour of di-


minishing, of slowing down, of quieting. Thus islanded in dimness and the mur- mur of traffic fading toward silence, one is apt for the ministration. Calm against background tumult is an essential of the hour; it is the firelight shining through the cabin window on the snow of the for- est, the strong shack beside a lake whose waters a gale is hurling up the shore.” Despite this evocation of solitary patri- cian ease, DeVoto generally believes that the cocktail hour should be enjoyed in company. “May six o’clock never find you alone.”He is, however, leery of big parties and contributes a scathing chapter about bars in suburban homes where the whim- sical utensils are nude women’s torsos and the wall placards proclaim: “To the Bar. Check your Morals” or “Danger: Men


CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson


Drinking.” He also believes in moder- ation: “Don’t overdrink,” he advises, bluntly. “The Hour” isn’t an important book, but it is almost a cocktail in itself, being at once soothing and refreshing. And per- haps that’s all we require from a book in July. Certainly DeVoto should make the fi- nal romantic toast to his subject: “This is the violet hour, the hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow and valor is reborn, when the shad- ows deepen along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.” bookworld@washpost.com


Visit Dirda’s online book discussion at washingtonpost.com/readingroom.


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