A guy who is now dead once said that he prayed, “Lord, make me chaste . . . but not yet!”

I, myself, have prayed such prayers . . . and so far The Good Lord has answered every single one of them.  

Which brings up the topic of a certain seductive French woman who has worked her way into this conversation on more than one occasion this past week. I promised you readers yesterday that I would unveil this mysterious figure soon enough, and today’s the day.

Did you ever see the movie, “The French Dispatch?”  If you haven’t, it’s not your fault.  It came out late last fall and was gone from theaters in about a week 

It had a great cast of characters including the great actor Bill Murray.  Let me just pause right here and ask this question, “Who DOESN’T LOVE Bill -Saturday Night Live-Caddy Shack- Ghostbusters-The Man Who Knew Too Little -Space Jam-Scrooged -Ground Hog Day- Rushmore- Lost In Translation – St. Vincent -and -the-list-could-go-on-and-on-Murray?  OH WAIT . . . let me ask it like this.  LAST FALL, who DIDN’T love Bill Murray? 

And The French Dispatch has even more A-List Stars than just Bill Murray.  There’s also Benicio del Toro, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Frances McDormand, Owen Wilson, Saorise Ronan, Edward Norton, Angelica Huston, Henry Winkler, Timothy Chalet, Lyna Khourdri, Wilem Dafoe, Morgane Polanski, Christoph Waltz, and one very seductive French woman, Lea Seydoux.

My beautiful bride and I love to go to movies. Last fall, I said to her, “Oh look, Sweetie, this new movie, ‘The French Dispatch,’ has got just about every movie star there is in it. Look it’s got Owen Wilson from that Woody Allen movie, ‘Midnight In Paris,’ remember how much we loved ‘Midnight in Paris?’ And it’s got Lea Seydoux, she’s that sunny and pretty flower girl in the market by the Seine at the end of ‘Midnight in Paris.’ Let’s go see this.” “OK,” said my beautiful bride.  

In “The French Dispatch,” there are  a series of several enjoyable vignettes in the movie, but the first, and my clear favorite, is the story of this passionate French guy played by Benicio del Toro who goes mad, commits some savage murders, gets imprisoned for life where he’s guarded by a woman prison guard played by Lea Seydoux, and there in prison he eventually takes up painting. 

Spoiler alert here: there’s a surprise scene where del Toro is viewed from the back slashing at the canvas with his paint brush creating some abstract art for which he will soon become famous, and then the camera behind him moves slightly to the side of him to show his model for his abstract painting who is Lea Seydoux standing before del Toro in . . . OH . . . MY . . . GOD . . . all her full frontal feminine glory! 

The audience never sees it coming. I know that I never saw it coming . . . and as God is my witness, I sincerely wanted to avert my eyes in that split second that I had to decide . . . for purity’s sake . . . and out of respect for my own beautiful bride sitting right there beside me in the dark . . . but my beloved . . . and Jesus . . . and Beelzebub ALL KNEW that there was no way in hell that I was ever gonna do THAT! 

After the movie when people who never saw it asked me what I thought of “The French Dispatch,” I simply said, “Well, it made me want to go crazy and take up painting that’s for damned sure!”

And now you know the inspiration for the proper pronunciation of my nom de plume, “MAA-zheek!”

But back to that same dead guy whom I quoted to begin this post. He also famously said, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”

Who was that dead guy talking about . . . or to Whom? None other than “my possibly imaginary Friend.”

More on my own restless heart . . . and my possibly imaginary Friend . . . next week.