manic monday

Mondays are always very long and hectic days from me, but yesterday especially. But not necessarily in a bad way. My ten o'clock class was buzzing, because our teacher just got offered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the new President. He has already held the position, under socialist president Francois Mitterand. Sarkozy is definitely not socialist, but this is part of his plan to put together the most competent cabinet possible. Hubert Vedrine (my prof) is a logical choice because he is widely respected both in France and abroad, is a pragmatist and has a lifetime of experience. The Ministry has also been offered to Medecins Sans Frontieres founder Bernand Kouchner...and I suspect he will get it for reasons that I wouldn't want to bore you with on this blog. Needless to say, most of our class was spent listening to Vedrine explain the circumstances under which he would take the job. There may or may not have been some Segolene Royal trash-talking in there too...which is always funny coming from the mouth of a respected Socialist.

Then I finished the day off with what has got to be the most boring class of the year. No wait. Not only is it boring, but the teacher is completely out of touch with reality. I should have known it would get this bad. In our first class of the semester he tried to explain "Terrorism" to us by using the Chaos theory. Yesterday he taught us that decriminalizing soft drugs is based on questionable and faulty reasoning. I'm starting to think he is confusing decriminalization with legalization. I have come THIS close to sprinting out of the room on two occasions because I could barely keep in the fits of laughter that took over when I looked at the expressions on my classmates' faces. This course is devastatingly boring.

But thankfully my day did not finish on that sour note. My friend had an extra ticket to Grizzly Bear at La Boule Noire. I hadn't realised it had been so long since I had seen a concert in Paris. I had heard this band's name kicking around but I had never actually listened to their stuff. Their music is so meticulously crafted...very haunting at times, almost as if their songs were made for a David Lynch movie. Their cover of Carol King's "He Hit Me (And it fell like a kiss)" is particularly eerie...and wonderful. You can listen to it here (along with two other songs). Despite some technical difficulties, the boys put on a fantastic show. You could literally hear a pin drop, the audience was so captivated.

Here's a clip of the boys doing an a cappella version of The Knife in the streets of Paris.



At the end of the show, the good people from La Blogotheque had a little surprise planned. A contest had been organised on their website inviting anyone who was interested to send in simple lyrics. Grizzly Bear quickly threw a melody together and sang the song live. Their accents were terrible, but I'm pretty sure the song was about how springtime is coming.

Here are some of my pictures from the show.