Important Visitors, Less Important Thoughts

I received some very important visitors this past week: my parents! Loyally trotting the globe to find me in The City of Light just as they had loyally visited me in the Land of Noodle Soup, they arrived this past Saturday and had hardly set foot off the plane before they began seeing the sights and snapping photos. 


Naturally, there were many interesting things to see. After all, this is the city of wonders both large and small. And it is important, sometimes, to notice the little things when one is snapping photos. Things that only Paris can offer, like cops on roller blades:

Like goats in the Jardin des Tuileries (presumably eating the grass to keep it short? But this is as surprising as seeing live goats off the leash in Wahsington Square Park. Is this in the city budget?):

Like animals in even more unexpected places doing even more unlikely things: 

And even like people playing polo. But not water polo. Or British aristocracy polo with horses. BIKE polo, which looked, for lack of a better word, totally badass. 

We even saw the most famous of Parisien landmarks: La Tour Eiffel! It's named after me, pictured below, handing the tower to a younger generation, so that they too can joke about the tower's vulgarity.

Finally, let me say a few words about a disease that is unique to this city, and apparently primarily affects Japanese visitors. It's appropriately named "Paris Syndrome." This is a real disease, testified to by people who know what they're talking about, like psychologists and such, and it's precipitated by having a bad case of culture shock combined with a bad case of totally unrealistic expectations and ideas about what Paris is like. Similar in some ways to "Jerusalem Syndrome" (which you should also look on Google, because that disease is also really interesting), Paris Syndrome seems to hit the Japanese the hardest, presumably because not only is their culture and language almost the complete opposite of France's, but because their media perpetuates some of the most ridiculous lies about what's it's like in Gay Paris. If you watched nothing but Japanese commercials, you'd think that Paris was inhabited by no one except Hermes-wearing Champagne-sipping six-foot size-zero twenty-something supermodels. And although that's an almost perfect description of me, regrettably the government of the city has a little work to do to make those high standards universally adhered to. As a result, many tourists who develop this syndrome actually have a very real mental breakdown and need to cut their trip short. Or camp out in the Japanese Embassy for the remainder of the trip. 

So if you happen to be sitting next to some Japanese tourists on their first visit to Paris, please do your civic duty, and tell them not to get their hopes up too high. If it's anything like Korea, Japan is three times cleaner and a thousand time more polite than Paris, even if they don't have any good cheese. 

Be Nice or Cannes It

Get it?

Saturday we hopped on a plane and headed for the south of France to visit a family with whom Ashley is very close. They live in Grasse, which is very close to both Nice and Cannes (I tried to incorporate "Grasse" into the title of this post also, but it just didn't work out no matter how I played with it).

Today, we went to Cannes, which hosts the famous film festival. It also has some really really nice beaches.

As we gazed into the Mediterranean, I told Ash: "Just think... over two thousand years ago Odysseus sailed this sea. The Trojan War was fought across these waters. All the great heroes of antiquity were here, cooling themselves in the sun just as we are now."

"I knew you would say something like that," she replied. "Always going on about those Greeks."

(Also, let me take this opportunity to compliment the bus system in France. Whatever their other failings, and trust me, there are plenty, the French know how to economize transport in this region. We took one bus for an hour and transferred to another bus for twenty minutes... and the total fare was a little more than a dollar each. Go European socialism!)

And here's a picture of a little beach grill with a very name that just barely avoids paying big bucks for copyright infringement:

Finally, let me tell you about a very funny advertisement campaign here in France for Orangina. Apparently, this commercial was taken off the air in the USA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKK37G-ZWvk

In short, there's an entire campaign: billboards, television ads, subway ads, etc, all associating Orangina with highly-sexualized anthropomorphic animals. But not just mammals. Oh no. You can see Orangina ads with a sexy insect, a penguin, an octopus... there's even one with a sexy cactus. It doesn't have a face. But it does have breasts and some kind of sexy little number in red. Here's a sampling, for you refreshment and pleasure.  

Weird! 

Meditations on Thievery

While walking through the gates to exit the subway, two men spontaneously embraced me, joyfully crying “Hey, my friend! Heyyy!” in accented English while their comrades stood by. Following my first impulse, I pushed them away (actually quite roughly), but it was too late, and the MP3 player in my breast pocket was gone.

It wasn’t a really really expensive MP3 player. And it wasn’t my wallet or passport. And it’s not like I’m so hard up that I can’t buy another one if I really want it. But it was mine, and now it’s gone, taken by some men who called me “friend” and hugged me to distract me. Yuck.

This is the first time in a long time that anything has actually been stolen from me. (The last time I can remember was high school, when a ring of students was busted stealing $100 TI-83 calculators from other students and selling them on the internet. I was one of the victims.)

So we’re not living in the best neighborhood, and people steal things sometimes. But for some reason this is really hard for my protected Connecticut psychology to come to terms with. The feelings of violation and injustice have been described to me before, but now I’m feeling them first-hand. To distract myself from these unpleasant feelings, here is a picture that has nothing to do with these meditations: 


 Also, these guys were Arabic, and they live in a racist society that discriminates against people who come from their part of the world (or from northern Africa, the other region which sends many unwanted immigrants into France). Which complexifies things further. In all probability, economic injustices necessitate their lifestyle of straight-up banditry, and they would happily leave their life of sordid crime if they could find gainful employ. So on the one hand I’m sympathetic to the struggles of living within a racist society, and therefore (in some measure) willing to forgive their transgressions against me and the laws of this country. On the other hand, WHAT THEY DID IS REALLY MESSED UP, and on more than one level. After all, with every theft they execute, this group of people willfully participates in the systematic production of the very racial prejudices from which they are (presumably) trying to escape. In other words, I’m going to really be careful now whenever I see groups of people loitering around the subway entrances and exits: especially if they’re young, male, and Arabic. Also, it kind of looks like the gryphon is spitting on my head, right??

But with the help of my father’s example, I want this conclusion to take a different tone. He taught me from a very young age what may be the best and most therapeutic way of responding to this sort of thing. When I was a boy, some crook broke his back windshield and stole a leather jacket out of his car. Losing the jacket hardly bothered him at all: he explained to me that if someone else needed it badly enough to steal it, he would gladly give it up. On the other hand, having his window broken angered him substantially... because the car was unlocked the whole time. Tonight, I was mugged with a hug, and isn’t that better than having my metaphorical windshield broken? So today, I sign myself:

Windows Unbroken,
Chris

does the existence of existentialism precede the essence of existential essentials?

I should warn you that the following post constitutes a written record of a dirty and far-too-extended joke, and is thus of no interest to anyone except me and the young lady with whom I share it. But I report it, nonetheless, out of a sense of obligation to my loyal readers, whose boundless enthusiasm for my life and work deserves no less.

We declared yesterday Existentialist Day. Channeling Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, we dressed in dark colorless clothes and tried not to smile all day. Among the day's activities, we traveled like po-mo pilgrims to the Montparnasse Cemetery, where we visited the graves of Sartre, Ionesco, Simone de Beauvoir, Beckett, Baudelaire, and other anti-luminaries.

Here we are, testifying to the absurdity of life by silently screaming into one another's ears in front of Samuel Beckett's gravestone. (Incidentally, this man stole several months of my life as I wrote my thesis on him, so it's only fitting that I should lovingly make light of his slide into eternity.) 

Taking reprieve from the existentially terrifying rain, we stopped by Les Deux Magots, a cafe once frequented by Hemingway, Picasso, and other characters from Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, in addition to the already too-much mentioned French existentialists. 

Finally, in further testament to the absurdity of our world, I give you a photo from the Paris metro. In order to maximize the existential impact, I give it to you without comment or explanation. Bonn nuit. 

the best thing about france...

...might be the crepes, which I'm clearly enjoying in the picture above. They can be sweet or savory, but my favorite is the crepe avec banane et nutella.

Yesterday, I climbed the famous steps up to the Sacre-Coeur of Montmartre, which is walking distance from the apartment where we're staying now. It's the highest point in Paris, and affords a fairly breathtaking panoramic of the city. Check it out:

See that blue-roofed building near the top-left of the frame? That's the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum here (it was apparently designed to look like an inside-out factory... those trippy French artistes). Also, see that domed building near the top-right of the frame? That's some other important building. Probably a church or something.

Also, on the climb through the park, I heard a familiar sound and came across a group of (feral?) cats chasing each other around like little mountain lions. (Or chasing each other around like cougars chase tom cats?) (Or like ladies chase stray cats?)
Longtime followers of this blog might notice a strange correlation between this cat/mountain connection and an earlier incident in Korea. But the cat I caught on camera this time was far cuter. Just look at how he's stopping to smell the flowers.

Permit to end this tiny photographic tour of my life with a recapitulating word about the food here: it's awesome. Witness our dinner (smoked salmon and vin rouge out of the frame), accompanied by Sartre IN THE ORIGINAL FRENCH (yes I will be mentioning that in every blog post from now until forever). 

In the Summer When It Sizzles...

So I've been in the City of Light for a little more than a week, and I though it was time to rejuvenate this ancient blog with posts from a new country in the old world... I'll be living in Paris for the summer, and my goals are three-fold:

1) Become tres proficient at French. Ironically, this is important for getting a PhD in English Literature (my uber-goal) and for pretentiously reading Sartre in the original language. 

2) Avoid getting syphilis. (This won't be too difficult, I hope, as long as I avoid the Moulin Rouge and 19th-century prostitutes.) 

3) Not be completely broke by the end of the summer.

Apropos the third goal, living is Paris is not cheap, so I had to think about ways to put a few Euros in my pocket while I'm here. Although I'm certainly not a talented guitar player, I figured, hey! This is a free country, right? A land of wine-stained opportunity, yes? The convivial Parisians (and millions of tourists) would almost certainly help out a struggling young boheme with a bit of their pocket change in exchange for songs about l'amour et la guerre, non? Why not give it a shot, n'est pas?

Well, the bad news is that it's illegal, for one thing. There are only a certain number of busking (street-performing) licenses administered by the Paris government each year, and to get a license requires an audition (which only happens once a year) and a French working permit or residency card or something. But the good news is that, just like in the United States of Racist America, my skin color works to my advantage here when dealing with the gendarmes, even if my nationality does not. Apparently the French, who admittedly have a reputation for hating les Americains, hate the immigrants from North Africa even more. About the worst I can expect, apparently, is for the police to tell me to piss off. A ticket is extremely unlikely, and getting arrested entirely out of the question. So far, c'est bon. 

So after months of practicing and nervousness, I finally conquered my fears and hit the streets yesterday. Or, to be more precise, I hit the park--Trocadero (pictured above), which commands probably the best view of the Eiffel Tower to be found in the whole city. I tried not to be too optimistic about how much I would make, but I was pleasantly surprised when I netted about eleven euros (approximately fourteen dollars?) after two hours of playing. Of course, ten out of those eleven euros came from a single benevolent benefactress with whom I spoke for some time en francais, and apparently made a favorable impression--I think I heard her whispering to her companion that I was "tres charismatique." Quell surprise! 

More bons mots from the land of the surrendering baguette will follow shortly, so keep those eyes peeled for  more interweb updates, my loyal followers & fans!

Another Epic "Thinking Project"

I gave my elementary students another "Thinking Project" the other day. This time the subject was a little bit morbid, but it wasn't exactly my choice (it's part of the curriculum that I have to administer). Our reading for the week was on organ donation, strangely enough, so the thinking project aimed at getting the kids thinking about what they would like to do if they had only three months left to live. They then had to take that "Make A Wish Foundation" themed list and turn it into a song. I wasn't kidding when I said "morbid," right?

Here is one group's list of things they want to do before they die:
1.) Travel the world
2.) Shopping
3.) Body adventure
4.) Kill all of the boys

Except I guess they thought twice about number three, since it was crossed out and "Explore in the body!" was written in its place. I refrained from commenting to this group of girls that they might find number three challenging if they carried out number four. Maybe that's why number three came first on their list? In any case, here's the song they finally came up with:

WHAT I WANT TO DO

I will die in three month. Oh! Oh! Oh! My money.
I want to go shopping.
I will travel all the countries
Because I can't use money after I die.
And also many countries are also very beautiful,
And I die.