Florida is perfect for elderly people — even the gators wear dentures

Studying a broad area

I just returned from Florida. Great state. Even their alligators have dentures. Newborns make their arrival at age 72. Potty chair? We’re talking wheelchair. Want the bottle? That means Metamucil. Holiday gifts are diapers for everyone.

Those not subsidizing their pregnancy with Social Security are touring. Me, having been everywhere except for downtown Madagascar because I don’t know where that thing is, I treat you to some travel tales.

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In the heights

Bhutan. Up. Very up. Like up the way upper Eastern Himalayas are — as if anything’s happening in the Western Himalayas. Previously locked in because of the old pandemic.

Those Himalayas are high up. Real high up. Tshering Tobgay the PM is young. Handsome. Educated here. Speaks perfect United States. If heading there, forget inviting me. I get a nosebleed above a mezzanine.

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Thai’d down

Bangkok. One of my friend Queen Sirikit’s staffers arranged the stay. An extra couch — doubling as a pull-out bed — was open in the living room. One night the phone rang. Running to answer it I fell smack across this pull-out’s steel underpinnings. My leg was cut open.

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Party police

Indonesia. I’m there writing its first president’s autobio. Sukarno invites me to his 90-minute schlep-away weekend retreat but I don’t know where my driver’s headed. No lights on the pitch black road. Strange for what’s to be a party atmosphere. Guards creep from hidden bushes. Surround the car. Rifles pointed.

My knowledge of their Bahasa language? Nil. Their English? Zero. The guards, nervous. No lights anywhere. I shout I’m invited. They don’t understand. Rifles point. My driver’s panicking. Finally some officer appears, makes a phone call. Suddenly, down come barriers, up comes a convoy from the shrubbery and I’m escorted to the front door.

The president himself appears. Barefoot. Pajamas. Says to me: “Why are you here? The party’s tomorrow!”

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A place to isle away the days

Papeete, Tahiti. Marlon Brando’s then home — seven hours by a Hollywood jet, minutes off the only road, short driveway, no gatekeeper, no gate at all, no ID nameplate, behind South Pacific coconut, mango, banana and papaya trees, five minutes from Faa’a Airport stood Brando’s souped up motorcycle.

Tarita, Marlon’s then beautiful live-in Tahitian dancer roommate — high cheekbones, big eyes, waist smaller than my wrist — said: “I have no help in the house. No maid, servant, cook or laundrywoman. I do all the cooking, cleaning, washing myself. He wants to relax so it isn’t right to have someone else disturb him.” Yeah, right.

“I put the straw mats down. And with my sewing machine I sewed our long yellow drapes and white curtains and I hung them up, too. But he helped. He bought me a washing machine.”

I informed her she’d never make it in New York.

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Home in the USA, I visited Hollywood. I asked one star how many bathrooms were in his Hollywood Hills mansion. He said proudly: “I can seat 16.”

Only in Hollywood, kids, only in Hollywood.

See you in a bit, I’m off next week to rest my bones.