Gare du NordParis, France
31_12_2007
31_12_2007
L'Observateur : Year-End Edition
A German-born client with whom I’ve had a few personal exchanges told me that my job isn’t “a job.” Then he called me an “aussteiger” and recounted a German fable about a successful gent who quits his job, takes a train into the forest, and steps off at the most remote stop. That man is the aussteiger. In modern practice, the term aussteiger applies to a professional “career” type between 30 and 50 who drops out and tries to change his or her life. The verb aussteigen literally means to “step down.”Lately, clients have started tipping me. I’m not sure if it’s because of the holidays or because I’m getting better at my “job.” I made about 80 extra euros this week.
The best culinary deal that we have found in Paris is Chez Gladines, a French/Basque place in Butte aux Cailles that has huge salads with mounds of potatoes, jambon de pays, and eggs. Not to mention the duck and veal dishes. Dinner for four with two bottles of vin rouge and an oversized escargot appetizer ran us 74 euros. And it’s an easy walk from the house. Runner-up: Le Bec Fin.
Some friends from the U.S.A. showed up for the holidays, and that’s when it finally sunk in: I live in France. I think I have been in a quasi-dream state until very recently.
Richard Rogers Exhibit at Pompidou Center
Dr. Benjamin Plimpton examines
… the city of the future …
and then there’s this guy.
La Photo du Jours : The Never Weres
Place Jeanne d’Arc. This is around the corner.
Concorde
Foucault’s Pendulum
The BHV Men’s Store has grass growing on the side of it.
This was taken during the strikes. Check out the riot gear.
You guessed it
Our offices in Zacatecas
Bizarre bathroom door signage
The Louvre pyramid
Sacre Coeur at night
Tuileries
Hazy shade of winter
Galeries Lafayette
The Jerry Rig 07
Antique Musical Instruments for Sale
L’Observateur : Who Wins the Purse?
Riding home on the Métro from a poker game, the #4 pulled into Réaumur-Sébastopol, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a well-dressed thirty-something French woman in high heels standing on the platform. In a flash, a man came running across the platform, snatched her purse, and went flying up the stairs. In the same instant, the train started pulling out of the station as she was frantically chasing after the guy, screaming, and waving her arms – high heels and all. As it happened, she was running the same direction that the train was going, and I was facing the opposite direction in the window seat on the platform side, so the scene was especially dramatic from my perspective, as she was running alongside my window for a few seconds in absolute hysterics. Then, as quickly as it happened, the train hit the tunnel and the scene went black. I looked across the aisle at a middle aged woman, and as our eyes met, she clutched the strap of her purse with a vise grip.Moving to France was the only way I was ever going to have the desire to play Texas Hold ’Em. I’m stubborn like that. I won 11 euros.
L’Observateur : Around the Office
Glenn called. I was to meet a prospective buyer in front of an apartment building three blocks away. I stopped in for a double espresso and a pain au chocolate anyway, and still beat the guy there by five minutes. He was a small Asian man of about 45, and I would have bet he was Japanese. I showed him the apartment, he asked me some questions in broken English that I didn’t have the answers to, and then I showed him out. Turned out, we were both headed in the same direction, so we strolled together:Me: (saying everything very slowly) So … you are Japanese?
Him: Cambodge.
Me: Oh, Cambodian … Sorry about that … I would have bet you were Japanese.
(awkward silence)
Me: You go to Cambodia often?
Him: No. Unstaber … (apologetic) My Engrish bad.
Me: Unstable?
Him: (nodding yes)
Me: You’re a political refugee? … From Pol Pot’s … people? …
(and, as the words were alliteratively trickling off my tongue, I realized that the only people for whom Cambodia is currently unstable are probably the former Khmer Rouge themselves)
Him: (abruptly turning into the next available door) Thank you! Goodbye!
On the way back to the office, I saw a 9th or 10th-grade class walking down St. Honore on a field trip. No less than three of the students were smoking cigarettes while walking astride with their teacher. That’s not how things went down at Norman High School.
Then, walking into the courtyard of the office, I saw a twenty-something girl wearing a weird mask come out of the beauty school next door. It looked as though her mask was made out of yarn and I wondered if it was a newfangled Parisian fashion trend. This thing was weird looking. Intrigued, I stared at her long enough to realize that what was hanging off her face was in fact loose skin. I don’t know if she had been badly burned or had a strange disease, but his poor girl looked as if her face was dripping off her skull. Oddly, the flesh wasn’t red or discolored. It was flesh colored.
After checking out the cleaning lady’s handiwork over at the apartment on Vieille du Temple, I smelled hashish wafting out of a second floor window down onto the street as I was taking a photo of some dog shit.
I rode the Paris Metro bus for the first and second time today. It’s nice not having to go up and down all those stairs at the Metro station. And looking out the windows of the bus is nice. It’s the next-best thing to riding a bike or walking.
In the last seven months I have gone from rung three to rung six on my belt. I weigh about 93 kilos fully clothed.
Battre du Tambour
As of today, I’m playing drums in this band. We have a show somewhere near the Bastille at the end of January.
L’Observateur : Waste Edition
There is tons of dog shit on the streets of Paris. Most of it gets shat onto the metal grates that skirt the tree trunks on the sidewalks. The shit then sluices through and becomes fertilizer, returning to the Earth from which it came. Yay. In spite of this eco-logic, there are still a large number of big steaming piles that get left in the middle of the sidewalk.The other day I saw a dog lift its’ hind leg and pee on the front wheel of a bicycle parked near the Louvre.
Peeing in public is accepted in France, as it is in parts of Mexico and Oklahoma.
- I have seen small children openly peeing in exotic locales – such as the Jardin des Plantes.
- I heard that someone saw an entire class of schoolchildren openly tee-teeing in unison in a park in Lyon.
- Today on the way home from work I saw a guy peeing on a building a few doors down from the apartment.
There is a bubble of air in every Metro station and under most bridges which contains the French stench of urine.
I haven’t seen this much vomit since I was in preschool.
Proletarian Frenchmen like to spit.
L’sexpo 2007
Here’s something you’d never see in the U.S.A.:An expo explaining love and sexuality to 9-14 year olds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)