Feelin' French for Bastille Day (+ video)

My wife and I both have a mantra that we often have to repeat not only to ourselves, but to others: "I'm not an expat, I'm an immigrant."

While technically speaking there may not be much of a difference, we often find a mentality gap between those who consider themselves "expats" and those who'll admit (so to speak) they're an "immigrant." Socially, the term "expat" often implies white collar work or wealth, that someone has moved to another country other than theirs at their own volition and stays on their leisure. "Immigrant" is often perceived to mean someone who moved out of necessity or to forge a more livable life.

Though we're most definitely white collar and came to France purely of our own volition, we definitely put ourselves in the latter category. We're actively trying to integrate into the culture while fiercely holding on to what we like about our own, as all immigrants should. We're most definitely not living some fabulous life of luxury. In fact, almost every day is a struggle.

A month doesn't go by where we don't worry about making enough money, visa statuses, sending enough money home, better mastering the language, figuring out new ways to make ends meet... Anyone back in the US who thinks immigrants come in (anywhere) to live a fat, lazy life is an asshole.

Yes, we do travel, and yes, we do some fabulous or frivolous things, and you see those things on the internet because those are the memories we're trying to forge. I don't bother photographing or writing about the weeks we have to spend stretching one sack of beans, four vegetables, and 200 grams of meat into five meals for two people. (I'm saving that for the book, which will help pay 2% of our rent next year, of course...)

All that aside, after about two and a half years here, things are gelling. We've already felt Paris has been our "home" for quite some time now, but things are really kicking in. I complain as much as any natural-born Parisian (of which there are maybe 6). I curse the government and pray for revolution as much as any 68'er. I will declare something "merde" or an "arnaque" immediately upon hearing about it. I coo at the first sight of babies or puppies.

Ok, so I was always like that.

But there are little everyday things that make us feel more in our skin now than ever before. Nary a day goes by when we don't see someone we know in the street, at a shop, getting coffee, etc. Alannah now feels more comfortable speaking French with strangers. And just the other morning at 5 a.m. I called the cops (!?) to complain about noise from a huge fight down the street, and not only did I not have to repeat or awkwardly re-explain anything in broken French, but... They actually showed up and took care of it!

Furthermore, our local know-how is getting better and better. On the eve of the Fête Nationale, we turned up at the Bal des Pompiers (the fireman's ball to celebrate Bastille Day) at the Rousseau fire station in the 1st arrondissement just early enough to spend two minutes (as opposed to two hours) in line, but just late enough for it to be lively inside – where, of course we ran into some familiar faces from around town.  For the 14th of July itself, we dispensed with the picnic amongst 1,000,000 people on the Champ de Mars (mostly because it pissed early on in the day) and instead watched the fireworks from a more serene locale on the river. For probably the 90th time since the weather got nice this year, we very economically popped open a bottle of wine and watched the Seine flow underneath us...

It's a long process, but we're figuring out the system and almost fitting in. We don't shun the anglophone community entirely: You gotta stay true to your roots, you can't discriminate who your friends are, and there are some cool expats who aren't on the same immigrant wavelength that we love nonetheless. And we know we'll never really be French (maybe on paper, someday...). But as much as we miss American work ethic (no, really), California cuisine, and Mexican drunk food, we feel very lucky – and dare I say proud – to be here.

Now enjoy the fireworks.



(Sorry 'bout the video quality. It was taken with a mobile phone from a distance.)

#americaFyeah

That's the Twitter hashtag the wife used the morning of July 4 as we were getting our asses up way too early, all in order to go to Disneyland and see some fireworks or something.

It's just a model.

Yeah, that Disneyland, the one near Paris.

We don't do inane touristy things like go up the Eiffel Tower or the top of the Arc de Triomphe, even when we have visitors in town. But there we were, just the two of us, going to freakin' Disneyland. Because it's the only damn fully American thing you can do in Paris. Not that we often want to, but sometimes – especially on the national holiday – we want a taste of the nation formerly called home.

Sure, you can go to some American-run coffee shop/juice bar and pay €6.50 for a lackluster bagel sandwich that would be panned by any New Yorker with half a palate. You can go to an "American" restaurant and spend €65 on a more than regrettable meal of questionable provenance and even more questionable culinary merit. Or (providing you can hook up a discount pass) you can spend practically nothing to while away a full day of 100% genuine USA! USA! USA! Americana at Parc Disneyland Paris. Or whatever they're calling it now.

Yes, the food is crap. And yes, once you're inside – pass or not – they're going to milk you for every crisp Euro note in your pocket. But isn't that what it's all about? For one day, you can take in the crass commercialism, mass merchandising, and continuous hard sell that is America's gift to the world. And hot damn if it isn't FUN.

Very old San Francisco

For something like 14 hours straight we did seriously American stuff like have our spines realigned by Thunder Mountain, queue forever for Indiana Jones, watch janky video that hasn't been updated since 1987 on Star Tours, and sample all the marvels of hallucinogenic-inspired psychedelia in any attraction having to do with Alice in Wonderland. Pirates of the Caribbean brought back a flood of adolescent memories from Southern California, with the plastic artifice of SoCal (minus all the fake boobs) quickly replaced by the genuine faux San Francisco veneer of the Victorian Arcade alongside Main Street USA. It was disturbing how comfortable it all felt, especially the little vignette of San Francisco.

While others were rushing to their favorite part of the park or lining up for one of the umpteen parades down Main Street, I found it perfectly acceptable to park our asses in a booth in the Cable Car Bake Shop and futz around with my camera. Surprisingly, the cheesecake and carrot cake we had were much more authentic than almost all others we've had in Paris and – y'all ready for this? – cheaper.

Alannah about to take her first – and last – bite
of a candy apple. Thank goodness we have
an awesome dentist.

This set up the order of the day. As others ran berserk trying to get on to every ride and see every show, we took it easy and soaked up the America all around us. Cartoonishly giant hot dog? Check. Disgusting, tooth-rotting candy apple? Check. Rolls of fat pouring out over elastic-waisted shorts? Double, triple, quadruple check.

To be fair on that last point, we weren't surrounded by stereotypical fat Americans. Not the whole time.

(Which begs the question: Why do so many Americans come all the way to France to see a carbon copy of what's in California or Florida?)

Because when you leave the rarified air of Paris for even more touristy locales, you will inevitably run into our European cousins, who seem to have equal love for huge waistlines, racing team baseball caps, and talking loud. Really loud. In fact, over the course of the day, I started to suspect that the reason they stopped calling it "EuroDisney" and simply changed it to "Disneyland Paris" is because the former made it too easy to lampoon the park as "EuroTrashDisney." It was like People of Wal-Mart, only we're in Europe. Yet it was all so middle America.

Despite a few chuckles here and there, though, we didn't really mock that much. Yes, I sent out a few snide missives with the #americaFyeah tag throughout the day, but really, we did just have a lot of fun setting aside all the Parisian bullshit pretense and being as American as we could be.

Steampunky Discoveryland

One exception to all the USAiness of Disneyland is Discoveryland, the French version of the woefully outdated Tomorrowland from the original theme park. In a very smart move, Discoveryland is almost completely themed after French sci-fi master Jules Verne's aesthetic – call it Victorian space-age or Steampunk or Art Deco Futuristic. Rather than a stark 1960's-1970's vision of the future, Discoveryland is an almost romantic, dreamy vision of copper and brass and swooping lines and shiny rivets and... Well, it's just pretty. And the adapted version of Space Mountain to go with it is possibly the most awesomely insane roller coaster I've ever been on in my life. Without a single loop or suspended car or stand-up gimmickery, it kicked my ass every which way and then back several times again, combining the classic charm of the original ride with the how-many-Gs-can-you-stand brute force of modern amusements.

Space Mountain – like so many of the things we did – made me giddy all over. And I needed it. We spend so much time in Paris finding the best foods, visiting the coolest galleries, queuing up for sold-out shows, or simply trying to make ends meet. It was liberating to get barely 40 minutes away and suddenly not give a shit. Alannah made fun of me that evening for how I jumped up and down like an excited little kid upon seeing Remy from Ratatouille (or rather, some pimply kid in a furry suit) on one of the parade floats.

I can't remember the last time an exclusive run at an art exhibit or an amuse-gueule at a fancy restaurant made me feel that way. But this is to be expected. Cuz you can take the boy out of America, but you can't take the America out of the boy.

And for one day, all this boy wanted was an ice cold Coke, ballpark quality food, thrill rides and some big fuckin' fireworks. Check.

__
You can see the whole set of Disneyland Paris photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tavallai/sets/72157624305757587/

Off to a screeching start

My first trip to Germany is starting off about as smoothly as a gravel-filled Liverwurst.

Sitting on the Thalys high speed train from Paris to Cologne, I feel lucky to have a seat and only be delayed a few hours.

Due to a recent accident requiring extensive clean-up, services between Paris and Brussels (our waypoint to Cologne) are seriously reduced. This means open seating on the trains.

Luckily, we're savvy travelers who arrive early, read web alerts, and look at the signs in every language. So even though a Paris Métro problem forced us to take the slowest taxi ever to the train station, we were still comfortably seated without queuing or crowding on the platform.

Not so for some unlucky folks who have given up their seats to other passengers who showed a ticket, claiming it's theirs, not having read the signs that it's all open seating to Brussels now, regardless of reservations.

What turned out to be a hassle for many (who are duking it out for standing space in the aisles or bar car) turned into the happiest moment for me...

For two years now, Ive been subject to French authority on everything. From l'administratiom to la Sécu to the cashier at the grocery store, THEY are always right, and YOU are wrong.

So when a fellow passenger showed up 30 secconds before the train took off, pointed at Alannah's seat with ticket in hand, feigning passive-aggressive non-chalantness with her white iPod earbuds still in her ears (this is a skill mastered by all Parisian women), I was for once the authority, saying flatly, "Non."

She waved the ticket at me and said she had a reserved ticket, I was able to muster all my vocabulary and all my French functionary you're-wasting-my-time indignation to say, "I'm sorry Madame, but it's all open seating on all trains between Paris and Brussels until March 1st. We, too, have reserved seats, but die to the tmeporary policy of open seating, it is first-come first-served.

"I understand, Madame. I, too, reserved tiickets months in advance. However, it is - as stated on the signs and signaled by staff - open seating until March 1st."

I in no way feel like a better person for telling this lady off, as she stomped off in indignation, looking on the verge of tears. But in the name of balance in life, DAMN it felt better to give, for once, than to receive.

(My) Metropolis Has Nothing on This

As we hurtled toward our destination, you could hear the thick, icy rain pelting the TGV. This didn't bode well. And although the rain had stopped by the time we hit the terminus, the weather was still bitingly cold and wet when we disembarked at the station.

"I don't understand how it can be so cold and icy here," I said to my wife.

"Paris is south of London, for crying out loud. It should be warmer."

No, really, this is Hyde Park in mid-February

We'd just gotten back from the UK, where it was dryer, sunnier, and – dare I say – the food and drink were better.

Of course, this is all a matter of perspective. Today marks two years that we've been in France, and I've already said many times that it feels like home. As such, you start taking many things for granted, start whining about the things that bother you, and start pining for things that are markedly different. I started noticing this just over a year ago, when I wrote the unimaginable – postulating that beer is cheap in London. Good beer, at that.

My previous trip to the UK was also part of a trip to France, all while still living in San Francisco. Afterward, I wrote a post trying to quantitatively compare the two rivals. It all seems so naïve now, but at the time, I didn't know I'd be living in Paris, just a hop skip and 180km/h jump away.

So I know that I say the following with no authority or consistency whatsoever, and that my perspective will likely change again in less than a year: Food and drink are now better in England.

Warning: Foodie Talk. Skip down to the following heading if you don't care.

The Countless Feasts Laid At My Feet
Now before you get out the torches and pitchforks, I don't buy into the current Michelin brouhaha fueled by Chef Alain Ducasse's statements that London is now the world's fine dining capital. Ducasse is no longer a chef but a businessman, and he likely makes far better margins promoting his UK joints. And Michelin sells more books whenever it stirs the pot. Besides, I can't afford to eat at places like that, so these gastronomic titles are moot.

I furthermore don't believe Michael Steinberger's doomsaying in Au Revoir to All That, a book claiming that French gastronomy is all but dead. There are plenty of innovators on this side of the Channel. It's just that, again, their stuff falls in the budget of Sarkozy-voting suits who don't even live in Paris proper: The suburban nouveau-riche whose kids, ironically, eat at McDonald's and make American-style consumerism appear chic.

So I'll repeat, from the perspective of someone who loves to eat, travel, go out and fully enjoy life, yet also has to deal with a severely limited household income: Eating and drinking is better in London.

Part of this has to do with the near-parity of the Euro and the Pound Sterling. When Alannah and I first came to France on vacation (and wound up really liking it, so much that it was a no-brainer to move here) it was because we knew we could stretch our dollar farther than in the UK. But beyond exchange rates, my newfound appreciation for London has to do with the quality of what's accessible to the common traveler. Or resident.

Two towers of afternoon tea

For less than the price of a barely passable, likely-made-of-frozen-ingredients two-course "meal" at a typical Parisian shithole of a brasserie (a misnomer if ever there was one, as I don't see any beer being brewed locally), we were able to have a fairly regal afternoon tea at the swanky St. Pancras Grand.

Even if we'd thrown in a couple of flutes of champagne, it would've cost less than what passes for a decent lunch at a typical Parisian resto. And St. Pancras Grand is on the high end.

In Paris, if I want to have lunch for less than 8€ ($11), my choices are fast food, pathetic "wok" fare, cockroach-infested Chinese take-out that's been sitting under a sneezeguard for three days, hygenically questionable kebabs, or some inauthentic crêpe made with industrial ham and cheese. Granted, there are some tastier options like boulangerie sandwiches or falafels, but I'm talking about a hot meal that fills you up.

For £7 in London, while you won't eat like a king, you can pick up a best-in-class Fish & Chips or enormously satisfying Pie & Mash, all made freshly with proper ingredients. Maybe even a drink or two. (For a full run-down of what we ate in London, see our food blog Hungry Amateurs: Eating London Out.)

While you can't beat Paris' multitude of outdoor markets – many featuring excellent products – the supermarket is starting to rule the roost, filled with industrial, processed garbage from across the world. London, on the other hand, seems to be having a food renaissance not only in its gastronomic scenes, but even its supermarkets are now replete with a dazzling variety of organic fruit and veg, locally sourced convenience foods (!) and information on responsible consumption. My local Picard, on the other hand, recently patted itself on the back for carrying frozen sushi.

Chugging ale at St. John. The hulking
figure in blue partially behind me is chef
Fergus Henderson.

The real coup de grace, though, was having lunch at St. John. While the maitre d' apologetically informed us that there were no tables available in the dining room for lunch, we were more than happy to order a few pints from the cavernous bar, where the menu overlaps that of the restaurant and comes from the same cooks in the same kitchen. For the same price as mediocre tapas in Paris, Alannah and I shared a few plates of fantastic, beautifully interpreted, and – yes – Michelin-starred renditions of classic British food. (Again, I don't hang out in that strata, but why not grab it when you can?)

I oohed and ahhed and licked my fingers and sucked the marrow out of bones and savored slices of ox heart and enjoyed the housemade whole wheat bread, vowing that we'd come back each time we're back in London.

All that and we were able to wash down our lunch with multiple pints of hand-pumped real ale, with no silly fancypants markup or that-doesn't-pair-with-your-meal scowling from the waitstaff.

And as much as I love a good wine (I'm polishing off a bottle of Gaillac as I write this), it's refreshing to go somewhere it's not frowned upon to have beer with your sit-down meal.

This is More Than a Party
While the English may be known for binge-drinking, it's also obvious that the wide availability of good drink makes for a more convivial atmosphere in general. Even if you're not a drinker, there's a happy vibe to a warm pub, a cozy booth, or a concert where they're not gouging you at the door or jostling you on the floor.

Happy just to be here!

When it was announced that Depeche Mode would be headlining this year's Teenage Cancer Trust charity show at the Royal Albert Hall, I told Alannah I'd sacrifice going to their Paris shows to come to this one – if I could score tickets. I did, it coincided with our wedding anniversary, and we agreed that a smaller, more historical venue like the RAH would be more romantic than a giant box like the Palais Omnisports de Bercy anyway. Score another for London.

Needless to say, the show was Depeche Mode's best in decades, notably due to the brief but triumphant return of Alan Wilder. (HD video of the best moment of the show here.) Throw in a string section, an intimate venue, and all of it being done for a very good cause, and it made for a special night indeed.

There's no point to comparing this to any night out in our homebase, but overall, I haven't been incredibly happy with the live music scene in Paris. Poor ticketing services/alerts, overpriced tickets, overpriced drinks, overcrowded venues, and an over-coked-up crowd (probably because drinks cost so much) make for lousy nights out, which is painful for a music junkie. While London concerts aren't immune to these problems, I simply find it easier to have a big night out over there.

Another Hole to Feed
Besides eating and drinking, one of the things I've learned to love in London is shopping. Despite my anti-consumerist leanings, I still like... stuff. And thanks to France's boutique culture of highly curated items, shopping can be a bit frustrating here.

Alannah made the Martin Gore style hat.
I made the giant scarf. All in my fave color.

For example, I recently got into knitting. This is actually good for my anti-consumerism, because it means I've started on the path to creating my own clothes. To some extent. It's bad, though, in that I now obsess over finding the right yarn for a project. (I can thank Alannah for turning me on to this neurosis... Thanks, honey.) Unfortunately, yarn stores in Paris – even the highly-touted Droguerie right in our neighborhood – carry a limited selection of what they find appealing or is trendy enough to sell. And because no one likes taking risks in this culture, every damn mercerie carries the same limited yarns. What's the fucking point? Who's dick do I have to suck to get a skein of Debbie Bliss "Como" cashmere-merino yarn?

So yeah, thanks to being turned on to knitting, I'm now one of those assholes who goes to London to shop. I couldn't believe I was telling the lady at the fantastic and charming Loop (Islington) that we were going to come back from Paris more often to shop there. She even gave me a loyalty card.

Again, I'm not loaded. But when I do choose to shop, I'm going to go where there's good pricing and variety and quality of product. (And before you get on my case about buying locally, most of the textiles at the grands magasins are Made in China synthetic blends.)

We even did a huge duffel bag's worth of grocery shopping in London, since not even the hippy organic stores here carry certain vegetables like kale. (Which grows like a weed in continental Europe... WTF, man?)

Feels Like Home – I Should Have Known From the First Breath
With that cold blast of the icy Paris air filling my nostrils on the Eurostar platform at Gare du Nord, I smelled that I was home. Paris has a particular scent to it – a moistness mingling with the faint scent of baking bread and stale cigarette smoke. It's "the Paris scent" as far as I'm concerned, and I find I long for it whenever I've been away for too long.

As much as I complain and always see the grass being greener on the other side, it's magnificent living somewhere that not only everyone wants to visit (for very good reason), but that I actually do love on a daily basis. Whose smells I love. Whose sounds I love. Whose irritating idiosyncracies I love, much like the quirks of any loved one.

Even being away for only four days, I missed baguettes. I missed being able to blindly pick a wine and pretty much never go wrong. I missed our local market people (even if they don't have kale). I even missed, believe it or not, the Métro. (Though not the craptacular Ligne 13. Nique la motherfucking Ligne 13!)

We've become so Parisian, in fact, that everywhere we went in London, we were surrounded by French speakers. At our B&B, at nearly every pub, at half the restaurants. Then Alannah had an epiphany: "We now are French tourists!"

Now that both of us have our residency cards, root for the French rugby team, and feign indifference with the best of them, we've become pretty integrated. But as I went to yet another mediocre lunch during work today, walking past the skinny undersized cans of fizzy yellow Kronenbourg in the beverage section, I really missed the chippie and the pub. And the gigantic serving of Welsh rarebit at St. John. *sigh*


Side note: Yes, all the headings in this post are Depeche Mode lyrics, as I still can't get over how awesome that show was. And yes, I did take my wife to see my favorite band during our anniversary holiday. And she sang along to every song. Except for the kinda boring ones where we went and chugged Old Speckled Hen. For less than the price of a soda in Paris, naturally.

SantaConneries

While for me I don't feel that writing about France is so much writing about being in a foreign country anymore as it is about writing about what I now consider my home, there are times that I feel like I'm in an alien land.

Take this last weekend's SantaCon, for example.  Santa Sparkle and I prefer to Frenchify it and call it "SantaConnerie." Not because we're calling for the sainthood of Sean Connery. He's already a knight, for crying out loud... but the French word derived from con, meaning "idiot," and its inherited form connerie, meaning "shit only a goddamn idiot would do." Because, to us, SantaCon is about going out en masse and getting stupid. While fueled on liquor. And, well, there was plenty of that. But there were also plenty of those alienating things that you'd think I'd be used to by now.

Let's rewind to last year, SantaCon Paris 2008. Here are some pictures. Really tame, right? It was mellow, and we Yanks were the only ones to show up with flasks, but it was pleasant – we really did roam around Paris spreading holiday cheer. It was almost naïve and innocent, and while not at all what we expected, we liked this nicety-nice version of SantaCon. Even if it wasn't the booze-fueled anarchic mayhem we're accustomed to.

So it was nice to see earlier promotion this year, and more people showing interest, with the Facebook page gathering more "Will Attends" in the first month than we had in total last year.  And suddenly it really grew. With a new flyer design and a few promotional videos (ummm, okay) there were hundreds interested in joining the fun. Was this going to be the Naughty version we'd left in our beloved San Francisco? Or was it going to be like last year's Nice version we'd come to like, only on a larger scale?

So once you get past the cheesy ending (sorry, sometimes I can't help myself, but I wanted an excuse to use some slappin' bass), did you see anything else wrong with the picture?

Let's start with the Santa pageant. Or whatever the fuck that was. While Santas participating in SantaCon are encouraged to come up with a Santa "persona," and there were certainly some admirably creative ones, it's meant to be a group movement. In no past SantaCon have we highlighted individuals, but celebrated our coming together en masse to delight, surprise, and sometimes disgust passersby. The eventual winner of "Miss SantaCon" had invited Sparkle to come out and participate, but she refused on principle. As she kept asking me during the whole timefuck, "When are we going to start drinking?"

Luckily that was a rhetorical question. Santa Black and Santa Sparkle, like all good bad Santas, came equipped with flasks. Again, we were the only ones, but I'll chalk that up to something Paris does better: There's no open container law here, so you don't have to hide your hooch... Still, a flask (or two or three) is SantaCon tradition, god dammit.

What was wrong in the beverage department was the Red Bull. While I'm not opposed to the taurine-powered mixer (it is a MIXER, not a drink on its own), I was appalled to see two women in Red Bull jackets carrying a portable Red Bull-branded cooler, handing out the little silver cylinders of energy drink. Last I remember, Santarchy began as a cheeky rebellion against commercialization. Here, people were glad to suck the corporate dick 60ml can.

The over-organized march was fine. While extremely lacking in drink stops, it brought a distinctly French flavor to SantaCon: That of the grève, or strike, if you will. Striking is ingrained into French culture, and it was actually a ton of fun turning typical strike chants into Santa-related mockery. Liberez les sapins !  Liberez les lutins !  Liberez [whatever we happened to be passing by]!  Taking over a Left Bank boulevard was pretty awesome, too. But would anyone have had the cojones to do it if we didn't have a police escort?

When we finally did stop at a bar – one of many same-ol' same-ol' Anglo-Saxon themed pubs throughout Paris – at least there was a drink special on hand, helping the lightweights around us get wasted.

We got moving again, on to the crescendo that was Notre Dame, and in all spent a couple of hours dicking around before the second and (what... the... fuck...) last bar stop. Worse off, at another English pub (ok, the first was Scottish) in our very own neighborhood that Sparkle and I don't particularly like.  We'd been there before for the Couchsurfing pub quiz on Monday nights and decided that we hate The Lions. The bartenders are slow, don't know how to manage a crowd, and spend more time chatting with their buddies than doing their job.

"Wait," you might say if you're familiar with SantaCon. "Why did you go there? Why didn't you just storm another bar?"

Well, Sparkle and I did (the much more locals-oriented Le Tambour down the street), and didn't look back. The real trouble with the Lions wasn't the Lions itself: It's shitty, but it's roomy. No, it became clear that we were led to a Couchsurfing spot, by Couchsurfing people, catering to a Couchsurfing crowd.

Let me iterate, I like Couchsurfing. It's a good organization (despite some dickheads trying to turn it into a for-profit venture a while back) and makes for fantastic networking. But to be led at the end of the evening to their shit hangout to get shit service at shit prices... What. The. Fuck.

You may as well have hung up a Couchsurfing banner over Place Monge where we met up. Oh, what? Someone was wearing one as a cape? You don't say...

The trouble here is that SantaCon isn't supposed to be owned, sponsored, or cater particularly to anyone. It was born of an anarchic spirit of self-expression and anti-commercialization, to bring joie de vivre back to the now long fucked-over holidays. How that's expressed is entirely up to the city and the crowd participating in it, but for the love of Saint Nick, do it as differently as you want, but remember what it's all about.

Now I'm not claiming San Francisco's superiority. While I'll stand by the statement that we are the world champions of drinking, SantaCon SF started to lose its way a few years ago, starting with its advertising of the event (again, WTF!?) on a douchebag nightlife web site. I won't mention any names, but it rhymes with ViteNibe. There are now three official routes, and many official bars. Can I say "WTF!?" again?

Back in my day, there was a starting point, a rough ending point, and every bar along the (not particularly rigid) route was ripe for an unannounced invasion. Some bartenders didn't like it. Some welcomed the opportunity to do a week's worth of business in less than an hour.

But don't take this as a curmudgeonly gripe. My crankiness comes from nothing more than misplaced hope. I was hoping that with SantaCon Paris being a relative toddler on the global scene, it could bring back some of the anarchic, free-for-all spirit of the old days. Channeling the soixante-huitards and Théatre de l'Absurde into one glorious day. A haven for the slightly surly but loving Santa in all of us, who's both a mean drunk and a genuinely fun person to be around.

In the process of editing the video above, I received a friendly note from one of the organizers, who's got no problem with my gripes. This rundown is a bit more developed than my Tweets and status updates to which he was responding, and potentially more inflammatory.  (Just in case it isn't inflammatory enough: FUCK YOUR LIONS PUB.)

BUT... We'll be back again, flasks in hand, regardless of how over-organized or over-commercialized it may get. No one can crush these two Santas' spirits. After all, we'll full of 'em.

Please Help Me Get Back to New York

No, I'm not throwing in the towel on France. In fact, things are rolling rather smoothly on the otherwise-maddening-bureaucracy side. And despite less ethnic food, shorter opening hours, and overpriced cocktails, I still like Paris better than New York.

But hot damn, I want to be on Air France's inaugural Airbus A380 flight between Paris and New York. Firstly because it'll give me some serious travel geek cred. Secondly, because New York and I still have some unfinished business. (Three days simply wasn't enough.)

Sure, tickets went on sale for the first "official" A380 flights a while back, and many people who already had flights on AF001 and AF002 between CDG and JFK were surprised to have been bumped to the new supermegajumbo. But I wanna be on the maiden voyage. They give you cool shit on these things. And yes, I know that they are auctioning seats for this particular flight, but I'm too poor for that.

That said, I still want to take my wife on a brief trip to New York, and it's still going to happen.

How? Because you are going to watch the video below over, and over, and over again.

Why? Because you're generally a nice person, and you can't wait to hear about what it's like to fly the A380.

No really, how and why would watching this video do anything? Because Air France is holding a "lipdub" (lipsync) video contest, and three winners get on that coveted flight.

So without any further ado...



If you wanna be really awesome, click on the video above to go to the YouTube page and give me a 5-star rating. And if you wanna join me on this flight (if I win) leave a comment. In French. (Those are the rules.) Because according to said rules, people who leave the most "fun" comments will win a New York/Paris ticket. Not bad, huh?

Stuff people are asking
Beyond wanting to know how watching a video will get me on a flight to New York, people have been asking a ton of questions. Here are the answers.

THE SONG
No, I am not singing, nor playing any instruments. The song itself was commissioned by Air France and is performed by French artist PV Nova. I selected the "electro" style. "Rock" and "Hip Hop" were also options, but I wanted to stay true to my geeky genre of choice.

The lyrics are pretty simple but optimistic. If there's enough demand, I'll provide a translation. In the meantime, here's the original PDF of the words.

THE CONTEST
The video will be judged by a jury, but another factor is how many views it gets on YouTube. So please, view view view view!

Also, I've been alerted that I've broken the rule about how the video is supposed to be one continuous shot, and not edited. This seems not to have bothered them, as they accepted it and put it up on their YouTube channel along with many others, so I guess I'm not DQed.

THE LOCATIONS
This was shot in Paris, New York, and on an Air France plane over the Atlantic. I found out about the contest just before my Atlanta/New York trip, during which I had to shoot a ton of video anyway. So I grabbed some footage in New York (some with the help of my friend Julien), a tiny bit of cell phone video on the plane back to Paris, and the rest was shot in Paris over the couple of weeks after my return. Poor Alannah had to bear most of the burden of holding the dinky camera steady while I shouted out director orders, much of the time in freezing conditions.

GEAR
I hadn't previously tried out the HD camera I got for work, so I took some test shots at the airport when - Eureka! - I realized I could start making a video for this contest. While a little of that footage is from said Sony HD camcorder, the majority is made on the Sony Webbie, a cheap, toy-like HD camera I picked up in the States. The on-plane shots were taken with my iPhone, since I was in a window seat and couldn't easily go get either HD cameras out of the overhead.

The video was mostly edited in Final Cut, taking up probably 12-14 hours of my evenings and a weekend, primarily while sick, not including all the rendering time between edits. Don't I deserve to win?

ANY MORE VIDEOS IN THE FUTURE?
Ever since the rousing success of my YouTube videos from Japan, I've been amassing a collection of video footage of all sorts of stuff. Not in a creepy way like that neighbor kid in American Beauty but like most people take photos. I continue to take tons of still photos, but video has really caught my attention - especially with how cheap and accessible HD is.

That said, in two years, I've edited together maybe 3 personal videos, none longer than two minutes. And it's hellaciously time consuming. I'm not sure if the results are worth it.

If you think otherwise, then please, click the ever-loving shit out of this video, rate it high, leave your comments, and help me win this thing. Then I'll know it's time to make more videos.

Foreigners Who Don't Drive Me Batty

Anyone familiar with me (or this blog) knows that I don't have a great love for most of my fellow American expats in Paris.

If meeting at an Irish pub and speaking exclusively in English about how much you hate overpaying for Oreos while sipping overpriced, past-its-date Guinness is your thing, fine. Go do it. Just don't do it in my company. And preferably nowhere near my charming little neighborhood. I didn't move here to hang out with the Marina choads who work in the Fi-Di, thankyouverymuch. (That'd be a San Francisco reference to the vile popped-collar scum who undeservedly get the most overseas working opportunities.)

So it was with a little apprehension that I finally gave in and went to my first Polyglot event. The wife and I have both been meaning to hit up one of these language exchange meet-ups held at a local bar, but having been turned off by the douchebaggery at most other conglomerations of étrangers à Paris, we balked. Self-hatred? A desire to break free of our former lives? No. As Alannah pointed out over lunch today, we consider ourselves - rather unlike the type we keep away from - immigrants. Not expats. Not foreign workers. Not a couple on extended vacation. But a couple of people who have moved to another country - most probably for good - who would like to integrate a bit and make local friends.

That's a tough gig in a socially insular place like Paris, but I think we've found a gathering that's just our style. For the people who sign up for a group like Polyglot seem to have a genuine interest in learning other languages and cultures. Sure, there are plenty of other 'Murrikans who show up – but they've come to improve their French. Or Spanish. Or Japanese. And it's not just Americans and French. There are Chinese, Iranian, Australian... to name a few.

Over the course of a few hours I had conversations in many of the languages I know (or would like to know), taught and learned various turns of phrase, and - OMGWTF - met actual Parisians who were as interested in what others had to say as they were with grabbing their next verre. In fact, more so.

If anything, I felt like the town drunk having two big steins of beer. But as I said, I was a bit timid about this whole affair at first.

While there's definitely some emphasis on socializing and having a little glass of something as social lubricant, it was refreshing to be around people interested in sharing. Not business networking. Not getting laid. Not whining about how no one at the market speaks English. (Although I'm certain a little bit of all that takes place as well...)

Although neither of us were social butterflies making the rounds, we met a fistful of cool, interesting people... And even made new friends. In fact, when a couple of guys found out we're really into food and cooking, they insisted on having a dinner party to introduce us to their "real home cooking."

The revelation isn't from previously thinking that such people didn't exist... Through the friends that we've already made we know damn well that there are friendly, welcoming Parisians who are as happy to lend you a hand as they are to go party with you. It's just that - even as locals will tell you - the social life here can be a very tough nut to crack. And thanks to a community of the linguistically curious, we've just started to tap a few more fissures into the shell. Tap tap tap...

Des Américains à Paris

Looking through the New York Times web site before the weekend, I found an article about an American festival in Paris. Figuring Sunday was set to be a gorgeous day, I proposed the idea of hitting up the festival to Alannah, who then told another American friend about it, who then brought a couple of her visiting American friends. What better place for a bunch of Americans in Paris to gravitate that, well, a festival called "Americans in Paris?"

Upon arriving at the Jardin d'Acclimatation - the part of the massive Bois de Boulogne where the festival was held - we were greeted by a gigantic poster of Uncle Sam, complete with a stars-n-stripes mushroom cloud behind him. And on his lapel, a button with the same mushroom cloud figure. "WE [NUKE] YOU" ???


All joking aside, it's actually the Jardin d'Acclimatation's oak tree logo, and their slogan is "WE [OAK TREE] YOU." Alannah had noticed this in the event program before we even went. But one has to admit, the whole mushroom cloud seems much more appropriate for the finger-wagging Uncle Sam.

We entered the park grounds, passing a small jazz quartet along the way (jazz is heavily acquainted with America here, and why not?), went through the ticket booths (a whopping 2€70 admission), and came upon what I could only call Main Street U.S.A. Only without the Main Street Electrical Parade. And instead, a shit-ton of non-sensical highway signs. In French eyes, this is what the great American open road looks like: A clusterfuck of signage, yellow cabs, and yellow school buses. And surprisingly, no other Americans.

Despite the fact that the Jardin borders Neuilly-sur-Seine, the America-lovin', expat-filled suburb nicknamed Sarkoville after President Nicolas "Sarko the Américain" Sarkozy - I didn't hear any other brassy-accented, flat-voweled English other than our little group's.


Alannah and I looked around in awe at what Parisians consider typical American. For the most part, they're dead on. Stands selling stuff you can't typically get here, like bagels, pancakes, brownies, and dirty-water hot dogs. (Most hot dogs here are baked into a bun, kind of like a baguettey bagel dog.)

There were tee-pees, because even though we've swept the indigenous population under the rug with a bottle of firewater and a trinket industry for company, American Indian imagery still weighs heavily on this side of the ocean as part of what America "is." Although they often misapply it in that National Geographic speculative anthropology kind of way that is respectfully interested but horribly off-base. The popular Indiana Café chain, for example, boasts a Cherokee headdress logo, serves Tex-Mex food, and - well - is freakin' called Indiana. Three things that have nothing to do with each other. Then there's the Buffalo Grill chain, which romanticizes the Wild West and Buffalo Bill, who happily sits side-by-side with figures of the very people he was out to terminate. But I digress...

Our first stop was to get a souvenir photo of Alannah inside a cutout of the signature American cultural export: Coca-Cola. This act epitomized exactly why we came: Seriously cheese-dick fun. Despite the fact that we're both food freaks who abhor high fructose corn syrup, we've become enamored with Coke since moving here. Not for nostalgia's sake, but because like Mexican Coke, it's made with real sugar here. It's sad when the American stuff abroad is more authentic than the American stuff in America, n'est-ce pas? (We've also come to appreciate *shiver* McDonald's, but perhaps because it's the only place you can get a burger for less than 10€.)

Looking around further, there wasn't much American stuff that I've been longing for. The pecan pie on display at one booth looked terrible. There were no chili dogs, fried chicken, or funnel cakes to be found. In fact, if you're an American in Paris missing food from back home, this festival had to be about the lamest place.

Despite the disappointed tummy, however, there was plenty to amuse.

We spent a good amount of time watching a local acrobatic basketball team called Crazy Dunkers. Because nothing says America like getting above the rim and dunking over some little kid. I mean, literally...


There were all the rides and zoo animals that make the Jardin d'Acclimatation a fun place for the family even when it hasn't been invaded by an American festival. ESPN America (which is the European version of ESPN... whaaa?) had set up batting cages. Little French kids donned American football helmets and did their best to knock down a tackling dummy.

And, of course, there was something to remind me that even I bleed a little bit of Red, White, and Blue: Cheerleaders. Or as they're called here in France, "Pom-Pom Girls." (Which, sadly, doesn't acknowledge the growing number of male cheerleaders, whom I don't personally find as aesthetically pleasing, but equally important in the college sports scene.) At any rate, instead of hearing me muse about gender equality in sports and spirit activities, I'm sure there's more interest in a picture, huh?


Overall, it was great fun, seriously aided by the gorgeous spring weather. I would've liked there to have been more stuff representing the America I know. I mean, besides a Marines recruiter preying on GED candidates or Toby fuckin' Keith. I mean things like California wines. Texas BBQ. Pacific Northwest beer. Humboldt county blue-haired bud. Ok, maybe that's pushing it. But instead of the stereotypes and booths from mediocre local expat businesses who are nothing but the colloquial "epic fail," I'd love to see bits of "real" American goods and culture. I'm sure most Parisians know that the USA is more than hot dogs, bagels, and Barack Obama posters by street artists. (Although all of those are A-OK by me.) Just as France isn't all baguettes, wine, cheese and nudie flicks (although there's plenty of that to go around), America is more than junk food and compensatory projection of military power.

Then again, witnessing the massive (in both ways) American family in front of us on the Métro Ligne 1 between the Bois du Boulogne and our neighborhood, dressed like they just ransacked a Super Wal-Mart, barely able to talk without spitting bits of unchewed food, and unable to stand on the train without knocking people over with their kielbasa-fingered fists... Perhaps many French rightly have a lousy impression of us.

50 more photos available in this Flickr set... yes, including more cheerleader photos.

Back in the Saddle

I haven't written in months.

At first I thought it was from the old theory that there's no better way to rob the joy out of what you love doing than... doing it for a living. After all, I'm primarily a writer now, and I spend all day looking at words. Either my own half-formed ones, or those of others - trying to find inspiration. If I'm focused on spinning words into digestible (or, rather, marketable) fluff for the tech masses, I probably don't want to come home and stare at my notebook or blinking cursor.

But then I realized, no, that's not the case. I still spend plenty of time writing invective against right-wing blowhards and musing about music and food on various social media sites. And more and more often in French!

In fact, come to think of it, I've been writing plenty. Just not here. Because back in 2005, I set this up to write about my travels. And since moving to Paris a year ago, I haven't really been traveling. One year in a continent where different languages, cultures, and food and drink are within a couple of hours by train or plane... and I've only been to Italy and England. Oh, and Montpellier, which might as well be another country.

To be honest, it's been a bit frustrating. One of the draws of moving here was this ability to go in any direction and wind up practicing my Spanish or German or Dutch or... you get the picture. But the reality is, despite having a lot of expenses covered and some cash saved up, moving overseas has hit the pocketbook hard. We moved a good amount of stuff, but once we finally found an apartment, had to buy even more. Also, things are just generally more expensive here. Books. Clothes. Dinners out. Drinks. A show at a small club. Then there's the pesky fact that we're now a couple on a single income.

The quality of life is high in Paris. Unfortunately, so is the cost.

I have, however, found a way around it all. And it's not in any Europe-On-a-Shoestring or Paris-pas-Cher guidebook. Nope. It's about something you can't find on a bookshelf or any web site. It's called... mojo.

That's right, baby, I've got my mojo back. Those who've known me for a long time know that I'm a fucking winner. As in, I have this uncanny knack for winning contests. It's not skill. It's not timing. I just win stuff. And there is a lot of shit to win in Paris.

A few weeks ago, I got a call on my mobile while I was at work. "Is this Omid?" asked the woman's voice on the other end. "If you're free on the 17th of March, you've won two tickets for the Tina Turner concert at Bercy."

Now, I wouldn't be picked out of the crowd as a big Tina Turner fan. I know her catalogue, I respect her as an artist, and no self-respecting Child of the 80's would deny having bopped his/her feathered head to her music as a youngin'. And hell, I actually was interested when I saw the poster advertising the show... Until I saw the €136 pricetag on the tickets. That's PER ticket. Convert that to dollars, and we're talking Madonna or Barbra Streisand-like extortion.

But for free? Hell yes!

So there we were, a poor-ass, single-income couple of unsophisticated 'Merkins, sitting amongst Parisian celebrities in what must've been the VIP area, with the hoi polloi occasionally coming up to snap pictures of the stars I couldn't even begin to recognize. Ok, I think one guy hosts a TV show, and another one was a French rock star, but honestly, I simply haven't assimilated enough to know. Then Tina came out, shimmying around the stage and belting out hit after hit. Call me an old bastard, but I fully enjoyed it. The old songs; the costume changes; the Mad Max set; the ridiculous Goldeneye set; explosions; the intermission where, out by the bar and toilets, I saw the largest gathering of middle-aged gay men since my old co-worker's Tony Awards party. All just three metro stops away... and after the quick ride home, Alannah and I said to each other, "We've got to win more contests."

And so we did. Last week, Alannah got an email from the folks at the recently opened Forum des Images saying that she'd won an invitation to the "Toi & Moi" party. Come as a pair, dressed as your favorite movie couple, be photographed red carpet-style, blah, blah, win prizes, blah, blah, chocolates to snack on, blah, blah, open bar. Open bar? Why didn't they say that earlier?

And thus we went, dressed up as Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction. Not super creative, but I have long hair and John Travolta's paunch, and getting the necessary hair dye, fake pistol, and bola tie fit our miniscule budget.


Yes, I know they weren't a couple, but there was plenty of sexual tension, OK? Besides, a lot of other couples came as completely incongruent stuff - like Darth Vader and Catwoman. Or Wayne and Garth. (Last I checked, neither of those pairs were havin' relations...)

Through the course of the night, we consumed well over a bottle's worth of whiskey each. Which broke down Alannah's language barrier a bit, since she pretty much wound up talking to everyone, despite her minimal French. And making out with the hot bartender. (Girl bartender, that is.)

And she's not one to do that type of thing. [Mental note: Buy more whiskey.]

Alannah claims that the bartender was the aggressor, but the pics tell me otherwise. (Sorry, she hasn't posted them to Flickr yet.) While I wasn't up to quite the same shenanigans, my Vincent did find his Jules. And no, we did not play tonsil hockey.


We were well beyond crusty the day after. But I survived my day at work. And Alannah survived her evening of training for the organization she's volunteering with. I work. She volunteers, works on her French, and makes friends with all the local merchants so we're always in fresh produce and fish and meat. And together, we win.

This evening, after work, I swung by the Lazy Dog Gallery to pick up a new special-edition Swatch designed by rapper/artist Grems. Along with it, a nice print of his work for this project, as well as a couple of wristbands for the launch party/concert at La Scène Bastille. It'd be a bit gauche to discuss the retail value of this package, but let's just say I can not afford it. But that's ok, because I won it in a contest yesterday.

To celebrate our great luck (as if that's necessary), we stopped by our favorite wine bar for un verre ou deux... then brought home 10 litres of the stuff so we can have some with the fantastically fresh food Alannah had picked up at the local open-air markets earlier in the day.

We have no need to buy bottles of wine regularly anymore. We do it old school, filling up two 5L jugs of small-producer wine straight from the cask at the beginning of the month.

We've made friends with our next-door neighbor, everyone at the bar downstairs, and the guy who owns the boutique next door.

I've traded in taking the metro for riding the bus to/from work. It's a bit slower, but it's less crowded, more reliable, and I can get more reading done without the interruption of changing stations.

And I've just booked a pair of train tickets for a short break in Luxembourg.

I think it's safe to say I've found my groove.

A Little Brit o' That...

I was having fun sending little Twitter updates from my phone on Saturday, gloating about my glamorous life. I found a last-minute deal on Eurostar for a daytrip to London, and thought, "Why the hell not? That's why we moved to Europe." Well, that and getting away from the festering pile of decay that is the political/economic atmosphere in the US - though that doesn't matter much in a globalized economy where we're all screwed anyway.

But I digress. While Joe Sixpack and Caribou Barbie are concerned about their insolvent banks and soon-to-be-foreclosed homes, we were living it up, sipping champagne and quaffing Scotch, hurtling toward London at some respectable fraction of the speed of sound.

We were on a First Class car full of Welsh pensioners on their way back from a coach tour of Switzerland, a jovial group averaging about 126 years in age. Give or take a few years. As the youngest people in the car, we apparently warranted a huge round of applause for our young newlywed status - or perhaps for our ability to withstand cold weather. Asked where we were from, we told them that we were Californians but now lived here. "What's wrong with you!?" one demanded. "It's too sunny in the States," we snarked back. "Skin cancer, you know."

"We love Florida," one of them said.

"I know," I wanted to say, "Old Brits love Florida more than George Michael loves anonymous sex and crack cocaine." But considering the company, I had to lie. "Oh, it's wonderful there. Orlando's brilliant any time of year!" I pandered to the couple who'd be sitting across the aisle from me for the next couple of hours.

To be honest, I don't blame them for loving Florida. All my memories of the place are fond. Gorgeous beaches, gorgeous women, gorgeous sunshine, more gorgeous women. Like me, they probably think "Beaches, binge drinking, and bikinis," and their subsequent perpetual boners, as opposed to "The Florida Gators, Katherine Harris, and Jeb Bush," which are enough to make anyone permanently flaccid. Florida is like Viagra - fun for the young who indulge in it, a last grasp at life for the aged, and a huge contributor to our fucked up system. How appropriate that it's shaped like the hanging schlong of America.

If Florida is America's cock, then London is Europe's pussy - or at least the loose-moraled hussy that keeps letting America fuck it. I'm not sure what the "special relationship" that Bush and Blair consummated is, exactly, but it doesn't seem like Gordon Brown has done anything to clean up the wet spot it left. Like its fellow sputtering empire, Britain is all commerical freewheeling and part police state.

Peppered amongst the 9,587 adverts flung at you every minute are stark reminders from the state. I don't mind being told to "Mind the Gap" on the Tube, but I get a bit uncomfortable being told, "Your town, your street, your home - it's all in the database." Or, "To find out what an illegal minicab can cost you, ask a rape victim." Or, "Think your belongings are safe? Think again."

Fear, fear, fear, and more fear!

Luckily, London is full of beer, beer, beer, and more beer!

Between rounds of shopping in the hipster-clogged new markets in the East End and the tourist-clogged high street shops of the West End, we downed some much-needed hand-pumped cask ale. Sure, you can get beer with a little bit of color in France, but even a pint of the crappy stuff costs an arm and a leg. After drinking beer (or attempting to, at least) in Paris, I somehow didn't mind putting down £3.30 ($5.80) for a pint of real ale. After all, you pay roughly $9 (with today's strong Dollar/Euro exchange rate, at that), for a single pint on the continent. Who knew that drinking in London could ever be considered cheap!?

The fact that a full pint of the good stuff costs less in London than a happy hour-priced pint of the yellow swill in Paris makes the trip worthwhile. Even if much of that trip is spent battling the morons of the London Underground.

I swear, I was about this close [gesturing with pinched fingers] to taking the head off of the next person who stood in the middle of a walkway, shoved me as I was moving faster than traffic as it was, or dragged their wheelie luggage across my foot with the 500-page hardcover tome on Ferran Adria I picked up at the bookstore.

That'd be the English-language bookstore. In England. Where the English books don't have to be imported. And subsequently don't cost as much as a mortgage or small vehicle, as they do in Paris.

Which has me thinking... Maybe more countries should dive into the downward spiral of financial mayhem. It makes for great bargain shopping. Anyone fancy a trip to Asia? I hear their markets are screwed, too.

Excès à l'Americain

This weekend marks six months since I moved to France.

(For those keeping score, that makes it six months and one week since I got married. Pretty cool honeymoon, eh?)

I decided last night that even though eating out in Paris is almost always a ridiculously expensive proposition (kebab shops and cheap Indian restos excepted), we should go out to celebrate. But where to go? We have a couple of favorite spots already, but I'm keeping them in the quiver until one of my buddies comes for a visit next week...

In the meantime, Alannah has gotten into the swing of using iCal and has been filling out a calendar full of fun cultural events we could attend. In her research, she discovered that there's a huge community of "Far West"-philes here. They're into rockabilly, folk music, rodeos, and - above all - country music. D'you think I'm kidding? Check out this link to Country-France. We scrolled through their events (actually, the rockabilly nights - even though they're out at Disneyland - sound kinda cool) and found most of them to be sponsored by Buffalo Grill.

Buffalo Grill is a chain that's proudly proclaiming how it's broken the 300-restaurant mark this year. Not only are they all over France, but they've invaded Spain, Luxembourg and now Switzerland as well. Considering the French take on American food has been, umm, worth a few laughs at best, we decided this is where we'd go for the celebratory dinner. After all, it would either be good enough to remind us of our homeland... Or be bad enough to remind us why we left. That and I really wanted some onion rings.

And to our surprise, while the place is a mixed bag, they largely get it right. Hell, they even serve actual buffalo! (Or Canadian bison, to be exact...) The onion rings are good. The portions are almost American-sized, but thank goodness they're not quite... we could barely finish our larger-than-French dishes. The quality of meat is excellent for a chain restaurant. And the chili con carne actually had some heat in it, which is unfathomable here.

Of course, there are some things they do get wrong. Horribly wrong. Their "Buffalo wings" come with barbecue sauce. Someone should tell them that the "Buffalo" in wings refers to the city in New York, not the wild west. My Texane platter (aforementioned chili, tender glazed bbq ribs, buffalo wings, a delicately baked potato, and... spring salad!?) - cited by the menu as "exactly like real cowboys eat!" - would probably cause more outrage in the cowboy community than Brokeback Mountain did. And worst of all was the godawful country/western music playing in the background. I'd be fine with some Hank or Johnny or Patsy, but some disjointed mix of Toby Keith-style neocountry horseshit? Hell, I'd take that chump Hank Jr. over the lunch-losing chorus of Chely Wright's "Bumper of my SUV". (Click the video link. I double dog dare you.)

Despite the song selection making me throw up in my mouth a little, our meal was enjoyable and succeeded in satisfying some of our longings for the You-Ess-of-Ay. Hell, even downing a cold 33cl bottle of "Bud" (it doesn't go by "Budweiser" here, as the original Czech brew owns the trademark in Europe) hit the spot.

2pas2VÉprostituées

I just had Indian food for the third time in a week.

For the last week or so, I've been fully appreciating our new (temporary) digs on rue du Faubourg de Saint-Denis on the southwestern edge of the 10th arrondisement. It's just up the block from the rue Saint-Denis, the derelict street full of sex shops and aging hookers about whom I'd mused recently. In honor of that, I've nicknamed our apartment the real estate shorthand for "Two steps from the old prostitutes." The tiny flat is also mere steps from the Passage Brady, so reasonably priced Indian food is plentiful. And less likely to result in a trip to the clinic.

Overall, it's just so nice to be back in civilization. The tiny flat (ours for the rest of August) is on a relatively quiet courtyard - miles and miles from the speedway that was boulevard Péreire - where the only annoyance is the hunger I feel from the savory smells of the kebab shop below. That and the six-story climb up, but I'm getting over it.

The neighborhood is certainly interesting. "Colorful," most people would probably euphemize. Other than London-Heathrow airport, I don't think I've ever been in one place where I've heard so many languages from East Asia, the Asian subcontinent, Subsaharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East at the same time. The melange of cultures sometimes leads to very loud misunderstandings, but more so to crazy good smells.

Turkish kebab shops share the same air with Pakistani takeouts, Kurdish sandwich shops, Indian buffets, and my favorite Middle Eastern street food - corn on the cob roasted over coals in misappropriated shopping carts. If not for those five flights of stairs, I'd be a lard-ass by now.

Of course, all the delicious food is offset by the fact that the main street surface in this neighborhood is not made of cobblestone, but cigarette butts and pigeon feathers. It's all very filthy, nothing like the cloistered, lawyer/accountant/consultant-inhabited streets of the stodgy 17th.

I highly recommend it.

City of Lightning

Paris is flooding.

Oh, don't worry. It happens every day.

Alannah and I go for a lot of walks, being that you do that in Paris: Walk. And every once in a while, we'd quizzically look at each other wondering why the hell the streets are aflow with tons of water. "It's like a miniature flood on the street... EVERY DAY!" she'd keep saying. Some days, we'd have to alter our course to get around the gushing water on a street corner.

Surely there couldn't be this many people washing their cars. And there aren't any lawns to over-water. Where was all this coming from?

It turns out that it's part of the whole street cleaning plan in Paris. The city spends billions each year just on cleaning. The sidewalks are swept every day. Dog crap is vacuumed up. And the gutters are flooded with (luckily plentiful) water to wash all the detritus away. I'm not sure where it all ends up, but considering how progressive they are about these things here, I'm sure it's being handled pretty responsibly.

In fact, you'll often see Parisians littering, as it's encouraged by the city. So proud are they of their oddball gutter-flooding technique, that they actually tell you to throw things in the gutter if you can't find a trash bin nearby.

This morning, those trash bins were full of water.

I had a hard time sleeping last night, thanks to the unbelievable heat and humidity. Not long after I finally did manage to fall asleep, I was awakened by a loud rumbling sound and the entire apartment building shaking.

The bright flashes of light outside really got my attention. It looked like the start of one of my favorite phenomena, a summer thunderstorm. I sat up in bed and looked out the big windows in anticipation of a light show. It may have been 4:00 in the morning, but there was no way I could've gone back to sleep.

Within moments, the torrential downpour started, and rain was pouring sideways into the apartment. I moved things away from the windows so they wouldn't get soaked, keeping them open long enough to capture some of it on camera. The amount of thunder, lightning, and - above all - rain was biblical. The water running down the street appeared to be a foot deep, gushing down like a miniature river along the Boulevard Péreire. The giant, heavy drops were beautifully illuminated by the sodium glow of the street lamps. And every time the lightning flashed through the sky, you could see the beautiful silhouette of the old Parisian rooftops, craggy with chimneys and antennae and angled slate chien-assis gables.

I got it on video and strung it together without any real editing or voiceover or sound. Alannah got some more of it as the storm continued much later, at 4 in the afternoon today. It's not much, but it'll be on the record to remind me of one of the most awesome, non-destructive storms I've experienced*.



* Sadly, the storm did take the life of a young girl out camping in the country. In fact, much of the region is on "Orange Alert," due to the intense nature of this storm, as well as some hurricane-force winds. Ahh, summertime in Paris...

I Love (doing) Rien

Oh how glorious it is to sleep in.

I eventually got up out of bed some time after noon, deciding by early afternoon that it was a good day to ditch our digs in the 17th - being careful not to step on the tumbleweeds blowing through its streets as we headed out.

A Métro ride and a brisk walk later, we were on the rue de Faubourg de Saint-Denis, its crowded, animated and (most notably) open shops bustling with people of all skin colors speaking all languages. It was a welcome relief from our yuppified, sanitized, chain-store dominated neighborhood.

We cut a right into the Passage Brady, one of the covered market arcades hidden all around Paris. It's filled primarily with Pakistani and Indian shops, spilling over with fragrant spices, fragrant rices, and all manner of peppers. There are a number of questionable-looking restaurants offering dirt cheap menus, and we sat down at La Reine de Kashmir, lured by its low prices and "outdoor" seating.

Feasting on a delightful Thali Rani (a set lunch composed of a couple of curries, basmati rice, samosa, tandoori chicken, and naan), we clinked our glasses of mango lassi and beer and took it all in. Men and women were getting 6€ haircuts at the hair salons across the way (which is to say, about 2 metres from us), Arabs covered in hijab squeezed by pasty, bare-legged, but off-the-beaten-path German tourists, people yelled in their mobile phones in Urdu (or was it Hindi?), older women tut-tutted their grandkids in an African tongue I'd never heard before, pigeons swooped down to pick up dropped garbage. It seemed positively third-world... and fantastic.

Sated by our meal, we went for a walk down the Faubourg du and then Rue Saint-Denis, snickering at the well-past-their-prime prostitutes hawking their, umm, wares in the afternoon heat. "See, I told you they're for real!" I exclaimed to Alannah. "So is this form of prostitution legal here?" she asked, referring to the wretchedly dolled up street-walkers leaning against the wall. I didn't know the answer. I guess if anyone in their 50's wants to do it, they've earned the right.

Oddly enough, this street is about a block from the Quartier Piéton de Montorgueil - m² for m² the most expensive neighborhood in Paris. Maybe that's how you pay the rent.

We wound our way south to the Les Halles area, checking out an incredible spice shop along the way, then did some browsing on the last day of soldes at the giant, labyrinthine BHV department store, along with some other home stores until closing time. Then we headed back to Montorgueil for some ice cold smoothies and retiring back to the sleepy old 17th.

This morning called for some more sleeping in, and wasting much of the day by watching TV. I caught an old 1986 episode of Diffr'nt Strokes dubbed into French - wherein whomever does Gary Coleman's voiceover overacts as much as the original. Brilliant! Just as Arnold was making some quip about the snobby, prissy Lisa, I heard the microwave DING!

"Whatcha makin?" I asked Alannah.

"Oh, just heating up some wax."

Realizing that I've got to do more with my weekend, I came up with a brilliant idea. "Ooh, do me! Do me! I've never been waxed before."

Alannah isn't someone to stop an idiot from trying out his idiotic ideas. I took my shirt off and let her smear a patch of wax on a tuft of wiry, black Middle Eastern hair on my shoulder. As the wax cooled a bit, I started getting excited. Anticipating a world of searing pain, I grabbed the heel of a stale baguette and bit down on it.

She counted down. 3... 2... 1...

RrrrrrRIP!

"That's it?"

It was fairly painless, and overall very anticlimactic. But my left shoulder is now smoother than a Brazilian swimsuit model's junk.

Now I had to come up with more ways to fill up my Sunday.

But this boredom is brilliant. It's magnificent. It's what I would consider at this point an ideal weekend. Because for the first time in god knows how long, we didn't have to go to any open houses. We didn't have to meet up with any real estate agents. We didn't have to make photocopies of our dossier.

Because just the other day, we signed the lease on our brand new long-term apartment.

And go figure, it's in the aforementioned Montorgueil neighborhood. You know, that crazy expensive one. But I love it. And more importantly, the wife loves it.

I'll probably have to don a wig and sell my ass on Rue Saint-Denis to pay the rent, but at least that'll give me something to do besides getting waxed. Which will probably help sales, anyway.

Wind Beneath My Jeans

Yesterday I went to watch the Tour de France, which should have me in some sort of cyclist afterglow.

Today I went and had a very positive meeting with a real estate agent regarding getting our dream apartment, about which I should be ecstatic.

But you know what's really got me stoked?

The lady and I bought our first appliance tonight. Five and a half months of marriage, and we finally bought our first piece of motorized housewares.

We were slogging through the thick, heavy central Paris air, my freshly adorned pair of pants (I changed from shorts to a pair of pants in order to look like a respectable apartment-seeker) already soaked through with sweat. With humidity and temperatures in the 80's (Fahrenheit, of course), it's often been feeling like a Manhattan summer, without the scent of garbage juice in the air.

I was about to suggest going to some open house we saw listed in the Marais (the prospect of which sounds utterly dull after locating our dream pad in the far less American-colonized 2nd Arrondissement) when Alannah suggested - nay, instructed - that we go to the Darty electronics/appliance megastore and buy a fan. "We NEED a fan," she insisted.

Fair enough. It was not only hot as hell last night, but I slept barely two hours, royally pissed off that I was being constantly eaten by mosquitoes. And mosquitoes hate moving air. And even more so, I really hate mosquitoes.

Inside the Darty near our pad, we found the appliance section and found a number of people clustered around the selection of fans. Nobody was very willing to move or make a selection, basking instead in front of the wall of cool air. This could be because there is no such thing as a reasonably priced fan here, so the best thing to do is camp out.

Personally, I hate sweating even more than mosquitoes. I rarely used to sweat without a workout or a police chase as the cause, but in this sort of humidity, I'm wetter than Ann Coulter at a GOP fundraiser. And I'll do anything to not be likened to Ann Coulter nor the GOP.

So I started looking at the air displacement capacity of the fans. 1.5 m³/min.... 4 m³/min... Ooh, what do we have here? 24.1 m³/min! And when it comes to not being sweaty, preventing mosquitoes, not being like Republican shitfucks, and making my lady happy - all in one go - well, then, money is no object.

I'm proud to say that we now own a Rowenta upright oscillating fan that's got better displacement than Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove swan diving into a bathtub full of sulfuric acid. And is almost as pleasurable.

The author enjoying his new hardware, in his underwear. Expect to find him like this every day for the rest of summer.

This'll Be the Last Time (I think I said that last time...)

This is my last big, touristy, holy-shit-I-can't-find-a-bathroom of an event for this season. In fact, I hope not to have to set foot on the Champs-Élysées again for the rest of the year.

Fat chance, considering I live right by it, but a guy can always dream, right?

After another week of overwork and apartment-hunting, we figured we'd be good little newcomers-to-France and get up really early this morning, pack ourselves a picnic, stake out a spot on the Champs-Élysées, and wait at least five hours to catch a glimpse of Carlos Sastre and others triumphantly blow by on their bicycles, wrapping up the 2008 Tour de France. I read that the crowds would be three or four times bigger than on Bastille Day. That the weather would be hotter and more humid. That the tourists are estimated to be an order of magnitude more obnoxious. (Something about an Aussie rider doing really well... I kid!)

So as we went to bed last night, Alannah asked, "Is your alarm set?"

"Fuck it," I declared. "Let's just wake up when we wake up and play it by ear. We'll go with the flow. And if we don't catch the Tour, there's always next year."

I think Alannah silently thanked god for finally knocking some sense into me. I don't want to tell her that I was just exhausted.

It was just past noon when I finally woke up.

"Heh. Guess we won't be hanging out with the early birds on the Champs," I said. "Want a cocktail?"

And thus started my day-drinking.

I flipped on the TV. "You know," I said, tipping back my drink. "They say if you're actually interested in the race, it's better to watch it on TV - where you can see."


My brain surrendered to the thought of just sitting around and drinking all day. I made another drink.

Eventually, perhaps after I got a buzz going, we decided it'd be worthwhile to venture down to try and catch the Tour in person. After all, it's just down the street. And if there's one thing I love about big events with lots of tourists, it's that I can roll in a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers - without being judged as a tourist who goes to big events.

The other cool things about these things is that - unlike the supposedly liberated San Francisco - drinking in public is totally legal in Paris. So we stopped to pick up beers.

The thing that blows about these things is that you just sit around and wait. And all the booze in the world doesn't make it any quicker. Despite the fact that we arrived many hours after everyone else (yet still managed to get a sweet spot, not far from the turn-around at the Arc de Triomphe) we still had to wait, and wait, and wait for any sort of action.

You knew something was about to happen when the crowd would start to get increasingly louder from the east end of the Avenue, with motorcycles and support cars zipping by. And then, as the excitement of the announcer's voice crescendoes over the loudspeakers, so does the crowd. If you're hearing impaired, you can tell this moment from everyone going apeshit to train their cameras on the approaching peleton.


This is because the only way to actually see anything is to grab it as a photo/video and watch it later when you can zoom in, freeze-frame, retouch or whatnot. Actually trying to witness anything live will require you to focus in like a laser for the 15 or so seconds of glory as the cyclists rush by at around 53km/h.

In fact, without a good SLR with a fast shutter, you won't even be able to make the cyclists out as anything but a blur.


Even at a good 1/320th of a second, these little bastards move too fast. It took me a few laps (which seem like an eternity of waiting in between) before I could fire off an acceptable shot.

The other problem is that - say you grab a good shot - trying to spot the yellow jersey is like playing Where's Waldo? Yellow is the official color of the tour, so everyone wearing a 10€ yellow shirt/cap/souvenir rain poncho in the background makes it tough to pick out the leader.


So it wasn't until well after the peleton had gone by that I reviewed my pictures and said, "Oh, hey! I managed to get Carlos Sastre!" Honestly, I didn't know who or what I was shooting.

The polka-dot jersey (worn the best climber of the field) is slightly easier to spot, if only because it's even more obnoxious than the yellow jersey.



Eventually, I gave up on trying to figure out which rider was which, which team they rode on, which country they rode for - and appreciated the big blur of color that would mind-bogglingly whiz by every so often. And wouldn't you know it, it was after I'd just given up to go with the flow that I spotted Sastre as he rode by in front of us.


Sated, we got out of the crowd a few laps before the end, hoofing it down to the Concorde end of the Champs-Élysées in time for the award ceremony. Thankfully, they put up a giant video screen for you to watch it, since the tiny stage is damn near impossible to see. Whether that's because the stage is barely higher than street-level, or because I was writhing around doing the pee-pee dance after a half day of drinking and standing around is yet to be determined.


The ceremony itself is rather understated. As the winners are handed a bouquet, they're flanked by two extremely hot girls. Besides the fact that you get to see these amazing specimens of the female form, you can also marvel in the extremely French way that their dresses are coordinated with the cyclists' jerseys. Leader's yellow jersey? Yellow sundresses. Climber's red polka dot jersey? White A-line dresses with a polka dot sash. Speedster's green jersey? Guess...

In the end, it was seeing those pretty girls in the coordinated dresses that got me smiling. There was a certain understated kitschiness to it (if such a thing can exist, the French are on top of it), going along with the understated announcing, and the understated speech by the winner - the Spaniard Carlos Sastre - who spoke softly and gently after a grueling 22 days that concluded with a sprint up and down the Champs-Élysées. There was no pumping techno music, no heads of corporations handing out giant novelty-size checks (although corporate sponsorship is the one thing that fuels the Tour more than performance-enhancing drugs), nor any sort of over-the-top craziness you'd normally expect at the conclusion of a major sporting event.


Maybe it's because it's cycling, but the crowd was - for the most part - polite and civilized. Drunk as hell, perhaps, but well behaved. Even the Aussies. And surprisingly, for as much beer as was being consumed, there was no pissing on the sidewalks. (Though I believe I slowly wet myself drop by drop over the course of the day. It was so humid, I can't tell.) Overall, it was the most surprisingly pleasant mass sporting event I've ever attended.

We've started to take these things for granted.

Late last night and then this morning, we blew off the race, figuring we could just walk down the street if we want to watch it, and that it happens every year. Then we go, we think, "Yeah, this is pretty cool," and then the bipolarity kicks in.

"Holy shit! We just saw the ending of the Tour de France!"

Then we think, "Yeah, but I could've done without the big crowds, not being able to pee, or the potential heat stroke." And we walk home and get an ice cream bar on the way, capping off another languid Sunday, thinking "Ok, I guess that was better than staying at home."

And this is representative, I think, of living in Paris. Alannah and I often go for late night walks after dinner. You walk along and think, "Oh, hey, it's that damn Arc de Triomphe again," or "Honey, do you want to cross the Pont des Arts or Pont Neuf tonight?" or "Maybe it'd be nice to walk near the Louvre." And once in a while, it just hits both of us. "I don't care how touristy it is - it's still beautiful!" or "It's so weird living by all these awesome monuments!" or "I just went to go buy bread... by the f***ing [FILL IN MONUMENT NAME]!"

So yes, watching the finale of the Tour de France in person was great. But at the same time, I really have no desire to put up with the masses of people, the tourist-oriented shops and kiosks, the overpriced everything, or the general lunacy of being one amongst several hundred thousand people packed into one street. And that's just the Champs-Élysées on a normal day.

Unfortunately, I'll probably have to do this every time we have visitors in late July. For those of you thinking about it, I've conveniently distilled a typical six-hour day of watching (or rather, waiting to watch) the Tour de France into six minutes.

Enjoy...