born under a bad sign

It was a busy birthday weekend, and now I've got a week of vacation, so I've been limiting my computer-time in favour of more enriching activities. Like going to see great concerts. Or one in particular. Last Thursday I saw Richard Hawley at le Nouveau Casino. He used to be in Pulp. Apparently him and Jarvis had one of those classic rock 'n roll love-hate relationships. And rumour has it that Hawley is a huge son of a bitch. Which is suprising because most of his solo stuff is about love and nostalgia...and the odd one about drug abuse and addiction. JC once described him as an iron fist in a satin glove. All that aside, his show was fantastic. And it made me realise that there is not enough rockabilly in my life right now. Here are some pictures:






So I made the shortlist for the French national team. They want me to come down a day early to play with the team and see how I mix with them. I'm pumped. It's like my competitive spirit has been awakened after a long hibernation. I played Monday and Tuesday this week and now I can barely walk. I am feeling muscles in my body that I forgot existed.

i thought my quick repartee was part of my charm...

It's been a while since I've been directly confronted with completely unprovoked insane behaviour. Last night after having a couple of glasses of wine after a long day at work and class, Cas and I grabbed some late-night chinese food. I knew this before, but it was brutally confirmed to me again last night: sometimes speaking english in Paris makes you an easy target for assholes and creeps.

So this thirtysomething man with crazy eyes marches into the restaurant and immediately begins harassing us in broken english. I ask him very calmly (in french) if there is a problem. Yes, apparently there is a problem. The man tells me that we know each other, through DJ Pacman, "remember?". Nope sorry I don't, I reply and go back to eating my dumplings. Well good, he says, because DJ Pacman died last night. That's a shame, I say without even looking up. More words were exchanged, mostly about this defunct mutual friend of ours. This guy was incredibly hard to ignore, but I did my best.

He proceeds to order food, while continuing to loudly harass me from across the restaurant. And then just as he's leaving, he stops in front of me, leans over and gets right in my face and says "You. The next time I see you I'm going to put a bullet through your head" while making the trigger motion with his thumb. At this point, most of the people in the restaurant had stopped talking. I had had just about enough of the random abuse, so I very calmly and very politely informed him that he could go f¤¤¤ himself. Oh boy, he did NOT like that! And to show his displeasure, he grabbed the closest chair and lifted it up over his head and asked me to repeat what I had just said. So I did. And yep, he was still pretty mad after the second time I said it. All of this, from the fake gun pointing to the brandishing of a chair over me, went down in less than 10 seconds. But the owner of the shop obviously has plenty of experience with psychos, so it took him half a second to get out from behind the counter and kick the guy out. And I was able to finish my dumplings in peace.

The moral of this story: don't threaten me when I'm trying to enjoy a meal after a long day. No wait...I think the real moral is that I have to learn how to keep my mouth shut. Oopsie.

it's almost over...they will be gone tomorrow...

The biggest tragedy to come out of France's semi-final loss to England in the Rugby World Cup is that it meant the England supporters stuck around a week longer. Harsh? Maybe. But until you spend a week not being able to leave your appartment without coming across drunken louts hollering "BONNEJOOOR" at you and then laughing as if they are the most clever dudes on the planet, or shouting obscenities at you because you're biking in a skirt, you don't get to judge me for that last comment.

I live next to the Eiffel tower. The game is being broadcast on giant screens on the field in front of it. My neighbourhood is teeming with idiots carrying more crates of beer and bags of chips than they can handle. I just got back from the supermarket where I stood in line between two different groups of supporters buying, you guessed it, more liquor. The guys in front of me were infuriatingly obnoxious: snapping photographs of the cashier, assuring her that they weren't taking photos of her breasts, asking her if she likes boys, then upon receiving a negative response asking her if she likes girls..."oh you must be a LESBIAN". Thankfully the brits behind me were incredibly embarassed and made some remark along the lines of "no wonder the french think we're retards".

I hope England loses. Badly.

Put me in coach!

The damn strike dragged on today and it's a huge pain. It has become nearly impossible to find a Velib' that doesn't have a flat tire or a busted chain, because EVERYONE has had to resort to biking to get around town. Not to mention that the machines you have to put your card in to unlock a bike are freaking out because of over use. I wouldn't be surprised if fights start breaking out around the bike stalls.

Today I put in my name to be considered for the French national ultimate frisbee team. I will find out next week if I made the shortlist. And if I do, I'll be heading to Tours in november for tryouts. And if I make the team, I will be playing at the World Championship next august in Vancouver. I've been going through team sports withdrawal lately, but last time I tried to play frisbee in Paris, it was an awkward experience. Not only was I by far the best girl out of all the others on the team I joined, but I could huck harder and further than 95% of their men. And by 95% I mean 100%. They felt emasculated and I felt butch. The stereotype of French machismo was confirmed. I promptly put my cleats back in the closet and kissed my athletic past goodbye.

But after looking at all the pictures from Canadian Nationals I got nostalgic and started googling teams in and around Paris. My search led me to find the national co-ed club homepage. Good timing too because today was the last day for applications.

They want me on their team. They need me on their team.

Recognize.

strike this.

Ah yes, nothing says France like a country-wide transportation strike. I'm not really affected by it because I live 2 minutes away from work. But I still think it's bullshit. Two out of the three main opinion polls that came out yesterday suggest that the majority of the population is against this strike. Get. Back. To. Work.

So what is it this time? The government is trying to reform the pension system, which is founded on antiquated principles and is costing a lot of money. In a nutshell: a long time ago certain professions had special pension schemes because their jobs were considered more physically demanding or dangerous: so while all other workers pay pension dues for 40 years, these special workers only have to contribute for 37,5 years. Now the government wants to even it all out and make it 40 years for everyone. Polls show that a large majority of the french population supports these reforms. Even the opposition party is keeping its mouth shut.

I think what it comes down to is that these unions are itching to strike. It's been a long time since they've brought the country to a standstill, so they figured this was probably a good time. The fact that, in this particular case, they don't even have the support of the population highlights the specificity of French unions. Because they were placed at the centre of the social playing field after WWII, they gained far too much power in shaping the economic and social life of the country. Furthermore, a law was passed in the 1950s establishing that the 5 large unions could represent any worker, from any domain, regardless of whether or not they were even members of the union. Subsequently, these unions became much less interested in what their workers wanted, and began veering towards extremism. This lack of representativeness is aggravated by the fact that in France, there is a very low rate of union membership, thus limiting the funding coming from adherents. Which raises another important and controversial question: where do these unions get their money? Answer: nobody really knows because there is a law that protects them from having to publish their accounts. So the result is that these unions are weak, financially opaque (ie: corrupt), extremist, not representative of the workers they are meant to be protecting and lack negociating skills and power.

this is not a good way to start the week.

So I had an aggressive bought of insomnia last night which was totally unexpected given how tired I was from my busy weekend. I must have slept about 30 minutes in total...and that was AFTER my alarm went off this morning. You can imagine how productive I've been at work so far. Also, I'm so tired that I keep on twitching.

Friday was wine-drenched, thanks to the friendly Chez Georges owners who had us over for shabbat dinner, although I use the word "shabbat" very loosely. In fact, it was pretty much just a friday night dinner in the cave before the customers were allowed in. Afterwards I headed over to Le Paris Paris to meet some friends, danced until my feet ached and then walked around for 20 minutes looking for a Velib'. Unfortunatly finding a bike on a friday or saturday night is kind of like trying to get a taxi. Impossible. Frustrating. But I've only had my Velib' pass for a week, so it's just a matter of figuring out which bike stands are more likely to be full at 4am on a saturday morning.

Saturday was spent reading. I finally received the book I was waiting for in the mail: the US Marine Corps' updated counterinsurgency field manual. I was sitting in a cafe waiting for a friend, and this twentysomething guy sitting next to me took interest in my book. We started chatting and despite him being a little bit drunk (the rugby semi-finals were on that night), we were having a pretty interesting conversation. Unfortunately it became downright comical when I came to realize how far to the left he swang... You know, like when someone is so far gone that no matter how poorly informed or ignorant they are, they are overly fervent and intense. And whenever you try to introduce some nuance or say, real facts, into the conversation, they look at you as if you obviously just don't "get it". I wonder, do these people ever get tired of always being indignant?

And then there was saturday night. In celebration of his birthday, Mike from Birdy Nam Nam threw a party. Himself, his "bandmate" Crazy B and Belgian pal Colonel were spinning. We got there at 12:30 and there was already a hundred person lineup. But a couple of text messages here and there and we bypassed that shit and headed into the sauna that is Le Triptyque. You know how sometimes I complain about there not being enough hip hop in this town? Well I got what I wished for and more. I hadn't been that sweaty since the Andrew WK show at Richards a few years ago. The walls were dripping, there was no ventilation and people were going absolutely nuts. The dance floor remained packed no matter what tunes were being thrown out: house, metal, rap, electro, UB-40...(no joke)

Yesterday I stayed in bed until 3pm watcing Schindler's List. One depressing movie in a day wasn't enough, so at night I saw L'ennemi intime, ("the french Platoon"), about the war in Algeria. It was surprisingly harsh and violent, and one of those movies that you're meant to say is good because it deals with a part of French history that many people are still unwilling to acknowledge. But maybe I've seen too many Vietnam flicks so I wasn't overly impressed...

Amsterdam

wu-tang is not for the french.

thecobrasnake.com

Fun-filled weekend - filled with dancing, wine, early morning walks home in heels, people-watching and sleeping in. On Friday, what started as a relaxed night having a few drinks at the usual bar turned into an all-night dance party at the Showcase. One of the guys from Hot Chip was spinning. Now, in general french partygoers have a pretty decent knowledge of music. Or at the very least they are the type of crowd that, if they dig what you're spinning they will definitely hit the dancefloor. Unfortunately, hip hop is rarely thrown into the mix and I miss it. A lot. And on that rare occasion that a DJ does play some hip hop, the crowd usually heads to the bar for another drink. Which means that only the people who "get it" are left on the dancefloor. So on Friday when Wu-Tang came on, I was pretty much the only person who got stoked and started pumping my fist while shouting wutangclanain'tnothintofuckwith. And that just ain't right. C'mon Paris, get up on Wu-tang already.

Last night WAD Magazine and fluokids put on a little party at Le Paris Paris. We got in 2.5 solid hours of excellent people-watching. There were almost as many photographers as people, no doubt because of the latest photography exhibit on at Colette starting tonight: