Yay, Jay Tay!

My friend, the finest writer and most sartorially adept individual to come out of West Virginia, has another essay in the New York Times:

By JT LeRoy
Published: September 25, 2005

"Cheese! It's hailing cheese!" We cover our heads. Our 8-year-old, Thor, cowers beneath us - his parents, Astor and Speedie, and me, a surrogate brother, sister, wannabe parent - as we form a shield between him and the miniature cubes pounding down on us. This is France, so it was only a matter of time till the cheese blasted us; we didn't expect it at the Tour de France, though.

We arrived two days before the tour's end. It was all anyone talked about as soon as we opened our mouths and revealed our furtive identities as Americans, noticeably scarce in Paris right then. A man in the lobby of our hotel, the Monna Lisa - situated two blocks from the Champs-Elysï¿1⁄2es, where the tour would wind up - informed me as I was struggling with a map that I was there for the tour: "Ah, you are here to see your Lance win!"

"Well, we came to go to Euro Disney."

His face crumpled, he folded his paper and, in an unyielding tone, rectified my faux pas: "You mean to say, 'Disneyland Paris!'"

By the threat in his tone, I instantly capitulated. "Yes, uh, Eur - Paris of Disney. What you said." After this happened a bazillion other times, I finally got the drift that the antipathy toward outfitting Disney with the "Euro" prefix could have something to do with its being the equivalent of "Dollar Disney." I started pronouncing it "Disneyland Paris" and received no more looks of vile disgust. Well, at least not for that.

More:
Uncle Walt, Parlez-Vous Fran?ais? - New York Times