The AIR MAIL Diary

The Diary again casts its eye far and wide for news, any news, that might distract us all from the vile toxicity emanating from Washington—make that Davos. No, make that Washington again—it seems he’s gone back. Anything that would distract us as well from another story getting 24-7 coverage everywhere: the intra-Beckham-family feud. (Will Brooklyn and his parents ever reconcile, and do David and Victoria even want to? Will the squabble affect Brooklyn’s relationship with his siblings? Will you please pass the arsenic already?)

Why don’t we escape …

Who can blame her for being captivated by “its round shape and gentle expression,” as the South China Morning Post put it, and snatching it up at a local shop? The Filipino woman in question then “spent four years worshipping [the] green Buddha statue”—altar, incense, the works—until a friend pointed out that “it was actually a 3D-printed figure of the cartoon character Shrek.” The woman, reported the newspaper, was “amused and speechless,” but wisely noted “that what truly mattered was the sincerity of her prayers, not the figure itself.”

The most tourist-swamped of tourist-swamped Italian cities had to endure the Jeff Bezos–Lauren Sánchez wedding last year and is now reckoning with the aftershocks: a demand, mostly from American visitors, for tours taking in not St. Mark’s Square or the Rialto Bridge or the Peggy Guggenheim Collection but rather “the Kardashian jetty”—the precise spot where Kim stepped out of a water taxi—and other now historic locations that featured in that days-long circus.

“A recent Bezos wedding tour began with a stroll along a street filled with designer boutiques where Ivanka Trump shopped, before the group stopped opposite the seven-star Aman hotel, famous for its frescoes by the Venetian master Giambattista Tiepolo, where the bride and groom stayed,” said The Guardian. “Alongside the key wedding locations”—like San Giorgio island, where the vows were exchanged—“there is high demand for rides on the wooden taxi boats that transported celebrities, among them Oprah Winfrey, Orlando Bloom, and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as for visits to the piazzas where celebrities were spotted or where they took selfies.” That sinking feeling isn’t just Venice but our souls.

Tina, an AWOL emu, was returned—handcuffed at the legs but unharmed—to the farm she’d escaped from, apprehended after a 45-minute chase by Corporal Thomas Keisler, of St. Johns County, Florida, whose narrated bodycam video of his pursuit of the very large bird (“I’m currently behind the emu”) proved a popular online entertainment when posted by the Sheriff’s Office. Meanwhile, “as many as four” out-on-the-town vervet monkeys remain officially unaccounted for in St. Louis two weeks after the first sightings, although last week environmental-health bureau chief Justen Hauser said that “it was likely a person was now harboring the monkeys, and that it’s unlikely they’re still roaming the streets,” according to St. Louis Public Radio. Well, if it turns out they are still out there, send for Keisler!

King Charles “has thrown open the doors of Balmoral for his subjects to have a royal feast for Valentine’s Day,” said The Times of London. “The estate’s exclusive restaurant will host Valentine’s meals on February 13 and 14.” The cost is $60, and the menu features Highland beef and “vegetable Wellington, hand-cut chips, and strawberry cheesecake.” The capacity is just 64, but those lucky guests “will be greeted with a complimentary glass of champagne upon arrival.” Might be a way for one particular commoner, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, now chronically, royally uninvited anywhere, to enjoy a brief taste of the life he once led. A date might be hard to come by for obvious reasons, but he could bring one of his 72 stuffed bears.

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson might have found his true calling—it certainly wasn’t politics or journalism—as a teacher. Johnson has turned snowbird, fetching up at the University of Miami (where the temperature this week was in the 70s) for a semester as guest lecturer in a course called Special Topics in Public Administration, Policy, and Law, and the reviews are good: “I was completely entertained and pleasantly surprised by how engaging he was,” one student said, while another found him “riveting.” As to what those “special topics” might be, we assume they include discussions about the lockdown parties at Downing Street, who paid for the new wallpaper at No. 10, allegedly lying to Queen Elizabeth about suspending Parliament, tanking the economy, etc.

The wave of Pokémon-shop robberies continued, this time at the Everything J&J collectibles store, whose owner, according to CTV News, said that “the thieves were only after one thing: sealed boxes of English Pokémon cards kept behind glass” and “estimate[d] they stole somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 worth of product, if not more.” Just the week before, three men—wielding a gun, a hammer, and backpacks—stole more than $110,000 worth of the trading cards from a store in Lower Manhattan. In recent months, there have been similar Pokémon heists in California, Massachusetts, and—because no place is safe anymore—two shops in small towns in Nottinghamshire, England.

George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at Spy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and a co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War