Anyone for Tennis?

Anyone for Tennis?

My experience at Palais Omnisports de Place Bercy began the same way it ended: with waiting, waiting for the discontinuities of the system to be bridged. After ten minutes of just waiting around, a courier, looking as unhurried and bored just as any gofer does, came and solved the problem. I was promised that this problem would not happen again for the finals, that my tickets would be at the desk. I hope they are, but I’m preparing for them not to be.

****

The Center Court of the POPB is the homiest aircraft hangar I’ve ever been to. The sightlines looked pretty good, and there’s no differentiation between upper and lower bowl; there’s just a lower bowl. So I had a great seat.

Unfortunately, it was a great seat with these caveats. After spending an hour or so straight in that room, I noticed that the air became heavy and hot, lulling me into a catatonic state. I had to step out during the changeovers to get some ‘fresh’ air, which was merely normal building air and not that fresh at all. When I did step outside for lunch, that fresh air rejuvenated me. The difference between fresh and stale air is like the difference between good tap water and mineraly, bad tap water: it’s the difference between life and a coma.

The lighting was both too bright and too dark. This was because the court was like a stage and well-lit and set-off. At the same time, however, the fluorescence was piercing.

Right above me, some machine emitted a droning buzz throughout my entire time there. That I would say was the most annoying environmental aspect, because it was an aggressive drone, like white noise on TV, not a drone that you eventually ignore. Other than that, it was curiously silent, even more so than most tennis tournaments. Music was much more low-key, except for the evening’s matches, which relied heavily on Rolling Stones vocals set to pounding techno beats.

The jumbotron only showed faces, and boring ones, and highly attractive people were rarely displayed, even though there was a fair number. Nor were the trivialities of most Jumbotrons featured: no racing tennis balls, no Kiss Cams, nor even advertisements.

****

Interestingly, the umpires speak a patois: scores and score related things are in French; but much else is in English. For example, everything challenge-related was in English, from the terminology to introduce it: “Blankity-Blank is challenging the call on the right baseline” to the actual display, which displays the verdict “IN” or “OUT”. The crowd loved the challenges most of all. Everyone said “OH” for the result, and not a drawn-out one, but rather a staccato series of “Ohs!”

****

The common fan noises/chants: first, the opening chords to “Seven Nation Army” (“Ba-ba-BUH-ba-BUH-ba”), the “Let’s Go” (“Ba-ba-BUH-BUH-BUH-ba-ba-ba-Allez!” Substitute “Let’s go” for “Allez” and the chant is the same), and the strange idiosyncratic one that I can’t name that ends in Ole! but is not the common one.

****

I first saw Teimuraz Gabashvili versus Nicolas Mahut match, which interested me mostly in an abstract let’s-go-see-tennis way, rather than a “Ohmigod, Mahut’s playing!” kind of a way that’s ultimately more stimulating. But the French were pumped for this match because Mahut’s French, as they were for every other journeyman and up-and-comer Frenchman on the card today. Everyone carried the tricolor, whether in miniature flag form or scarf form or some other idiosyncratic way. And, in one corner, to unite the crowd, a conga drum kept time for their chants. Unlike most poorly ventilated aircraft hangers, the room neither stifled nor echoed sound. The rooting therefore was potent but not too potent.

Anyway, there they were hanging on every shot for what turned out to be a very mediocre match. While both players moved well and quickly, their shotmaking left something to be desired. Like World War I, having been stuck grinding in the trenches for so long, each made several ill-advised charges to net, even though they did not have the firepower to justify that maneuver.

One funny point in the Mahut-Gabashvili match. Gabashvili served a ball to deuce court with some nasty spin that swerved straight into Mahut’s body. Pretty standard tactic. Mahut’s reply was not. Instead of shuffling over to the center while hitting a backhand, Mahut chose to squat a little bit, put his racquet in front of his face, and block the ball back into the court. After a crosscourt approach shot reply, Mahut sent up a weak duck of a lob, which Gabashvilli duffed overenthusiastically.

I ducked out after the first set to get some lunch.

****

Instead of “Break Point,” “Set Point,” or “Match Point,” it is “Balle de Break,” “Balle de Set” and “Balle de Match.” These were displayed on the jumbotron screen in gothic script superimposed on star-shaped sketches. I felt I was in X-Games: The Tennis Tournament.

****

I came back in time to see the second-set tiebreak of Mahut’s, which he won. It was pretty routine.

The next match was Fabrice Santoro versus Albert Montanes. Amusingly, the announcer ate the final ‘o’ of Santoro’s name, making it sound like his name was “Santor.” Poor Fabrice was dressed in a pink-green-and-black striped polo shirt that looked like American Eagle’s idea of 80’s fashion. Between that and his long-hair, Fabrice looked like the extra in an 80’s drug film who invites the hero/-ine to do coke with him in the bathroom. Montanes, on the other hand, looked generically Spanish and played that way too.

Playing generically Spanish seemed to work well for Montanes, as Fabrice Santoro had (as a consequence of his cocaine-debauched lifestyle?) acquired a huge white sleeve for his knee and was generally ginger and tentative while transporting himself around the court. It looked as if Santoro might be overwhelmed early, falling 3-1 down and in danger of losing the fifth game on his serve. But Santoro conjured some magic: he approached, his body weight and momentum hurtling towards the line, but was somehow able to, purely on arm strength, backhand the ball inside-out to the open court. Montanes didn’t stand a chance and Santoro ground out the first set. I ducked out; apparently he romped in the second.

The reason I ducked out was because I needed some time to take care of errands, and I didn’t care much about the participants of the next match, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Sebastien Grosjean.

****

Once I got back, in the second set, it quickly became clear that I should’ve cared about Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who’s 22 but appears to have some potential. I'm surprised I haven't heard about him, considering the cult of youth that permeates tennis moreso than any sport I'm familiar with, other than basketball.

He played romantically, with a fondness for big shots. Like most players of that type, he went on some spectacular runs, both on the good and bad side. But he’s very powerful. He’s also idiosyncratic for a French player in that he uses the two-handed backhand, which appears to be really rare here. His demeanor on the court was also very idiosyncratic: his face appears very calm at all moments, and yet he is kind of hunched over from shoulder-up, making him seem smaller than he actually is.

One great point: so one point, Grosjean tries to hit behind Tsonga on an approach shot (apparently the French call this a “contre-pied,” or “against foot”), but Tsonga, who seems committed to his guess on the crosscourt side, stops, settles, and lunges for the ball, producing the passing shot for a winner. Boom.

Grosjean evened the match in the second set, then Tsonga took the third to win. Then they went and played doubles as a team.

****

The next match was the highlight match for me: Fernando Gonzalez versus Mikhail Youzhny.

The match started out with Gonzalez racing out for a quick lead, as Youzhny played uncharacteristically sloppy (I say ‘uncharacteristically’ not because I know Youzhny’s game that well, just because, with his square face, buzz cut and perpetual stubble, he looks like he could act as the evil German/Russian spy/soldier who coldly says stuff like “Break him!” and “Kill them all!”), culminating in his lobbing a ball into the safety net. The French apparently do not like to see their tennis players display anger, and they turned against Youzhny.

But for whatever reason, the ball abuse (Youzhny got a warning) calmed him down, and they settled into exchanging serves, leading Gonzalez to wrap up the set.

Youzhny opened up the second set in the flow, dissecting Gonzalez perfectly. It looked as if Youzhny simultaneously had a God’s-eye view while he was playing; it was as if everything was preordained. Youzhny didn’t even seem to be playing aggressively, just going for the natural shot. I think Gonzalez was actually quite lucky to keep the set within one break.

Interpolation: on one set-change, Gonzalez changed shirts. Not a big deal, right? Except everyone—and I mean male, female, asexual, everyone—begins wolf whistling at him, like they were construction workers and he the latest hot female to pass by.

In the third set, Youzhny looked like he was going to succumb to the classic letdown game, but he managed to hold on. Two holds later, and we’re at 2-1 Youzhny, Gonzalez serving. After a five deuce (egalité in French) game, Youzhny triumphed. Apparently Gonzalez found this intolerable, and he smashed his racket against the ground, cracking him. But the damage was not enough; he sent his racket into the ground again, as boos fell down upon him. After receiving the racquet abuse warning, Gonzalez broke back.

At the changeover, a hot girl (actually the first shown on Jumbotron) was shown sleeping. Return of the wolf-whistles. The French: equal opportunity oglers (this is a lie; women are definitely ogled more).

Youzhny took the set in match in a grind-him-down fashion. He conducted his interview in English, then did his strange military-salute-with-racquet-on-head routine.

****

Then came a “spectacle” which consisted of gymnasts, and lighting patterns out of a James Bond intro song. With that and the upcoming Gilles Simon-Tommy Robredo match, I was getting bored. I left.

Not Quite.

Today was a day of unfulfilled anticipation. I was supposed to go to the Opera; that activity dissipated. I was supposed to pick up my tickets for tennis; that errand devolved. Not to say everything I expected to happen today didn’t, but the major things that I expected did not materialize.

****

The Opera was canceled because of a strike. I don’t really have more information to provide because I don’t know any. It’s curious how far-reaching unions are and how comparatively powerful they are. There will be another performance, so it’s not a total loss.

****

As for the tennis tournament, the website of FFT (French Federation of Tennis) told me that I had to pick up my tickets at the Palais Omnisports de Place Bercy (POPB—the French love non-melodious acronyms). This was a bit of a disappointment in of itself—I wanted Roland Garros, darn it, no matter how cold it would’ve been! I guess there’s always springtime.

The Palais is an otherwise typical concrete stadium sheathed by creeping grass. It’s a very typical French statement, the nearly vertical glass, an unnatural variation attached to an unnatural hunk of metal. Man controls nature and shapes nature until it’s better than it was before. You can see it at Palais, at the Musée Branly that I described on Sunday, and at Versailles’ gardens, with its conical hedges amongst others. On the other hand, France is very strongly opposed to genetically modified foods—although to be honest I don’t know why (if it’s for similar reasons as US people, I wonder what “Frankenfood” in French is?). So it seems a contradiction to me, but I don’t have enough knowledge to resolve it.

Once inside, I found the billetterie (the ticket stand) of FFT—very centrally located, so of course it took me forever to locate. I stated that I wanted to pick up my tickets, and the counter lady nodded in that service person-fashion, when they want to say, “I Understand, And Am Speedily Resolving Your Request.” The only thing that differentiated her from a US counter lady (or man—let’s not be sexist here) was the lack of a Mr./s. Potato-Head Smile: the smile piece has been put in the right place, but the rest of the facial expressions don’t match with the smile.

Anyway, after flipping through her envelopes kept in a weathered wooden box, she couldn’t find it. Then we reached stage two of counter-customer relations: the Problem. Many times in the U.S., resolving the Problem takes on confrontational aspects, as each party in the interaction, each with a disarming smile, implies the other is in some way incompetent, and it is the other’s fault that the problem exists (I find this most often happens eerily in airports, as opposed to the DMV where both parties don’t even do the courtesy of pretending to smile.) Of course, it can also take another tack—each party can genuinely be trying to solve the problems with no incompetence really perceived.

Anyway, this particular interaction was in a foreign country, and the foreigner always wears incompetence. I am always aware that there could be some abstruse rule of French etiquette that I’m violating, or that there is some aspect of life that I don’t know about (I was approached by scalpers today, and I wondered, what’s the procedure for that?). I’m ignorant and incompetent. That’s the reason that traveling is fun—I can see a way of life with fresh eyes and consider the ways that I could improve myself, and the way I know whether I’ve comprehended my lessons is how I respond to challenges. An interaction like the counter-customer relationship is a puzzle—there are moves that you make in a certain order.

So after the woman said, “We can’t find your tickets,” I assumed that the moves that worked in America would work here (actually I used the American move because it was the only one that would work.) I went with the Appeal to Contradictory Authority. The Appeal is more than just an appeal to an authority, it must be an authority that would legitimately confuse you, hence creating an incentive for the counter to help you. Also it was true: “Your site said that I could pick them up here.” When she looked puzzled and called someone, I knew that it was the correct maneuver.

After the phone ended, she asked, “Do you speak English?” I’m not sure if this was politeness or genuine ignorance. I hope the latter; it would mean that my French was good enough to bluff my way through a somewhat complex conversation. But it might also be the former—I know I always get frustrated when an interlocutor will turn so fast into English that it gives me whiplash.

“Yes,” I said. I was somewhat relieved, though, to speak simply.

Then she explained that replacement tickets would be available tomorrow. Good stuff.

****

As to something expected, I had a meeting today for my internship. The studio will be creating a show about the 2008 elections for the French Parliamentary Channel. It will explain what’s happening (who the candidates are, what their standings are), how it’s happening (Electoral College and primary system, for example), and why it’s happening (The issues) in monthly, 26 minute long segments.

Pretty ambitious. Lord knows that if an American news TV show tried to do the same thing for France, we’d get 26 minutes of Nicolas-Cecilia, which has, burned out and dissipated like smoke over here. Not to mention that the notion of the government sponsoring the show is somewhat incredible to me—I’m not generally a huge fan of government-aided journalism.

****
It always shocks me how unfriendly some French businessmen are. They often project a “We’d rather be somewhere else” attitude. For example, today, when four of us went into a traiteur, the proprietor was watching 24. We ordered our food, but he definitely seemed like he’d rather be watching Jack Bauer’s exploits.

The question is, does it lose business? My food was fine. I’ll go back. You can never really quantify what the losses and gains are, and this strikes me as a much more honest-to-self method of living. Not to say people should be jerks, but there will always be times when you’re in an unfriendly mood, and it’s probably better to just be as you are rather than put on a mask. Actually, I changed my mind: is it really that hard to be polite? (They have a different definition, evidently.)

Lazy Sunday

My defense for wearing my Sunday worst today is that all of my other clothes needed to be washed. My only clean pair of pants was my sweatpants, which had been peacefully gathering dust since the Shakespeare seminar. As for my shirt, clearly you can’t go around wearing sweats and a dress shirt, so my only recourse was a free Stanford shirt. And since it would clearly be foolish to wear a blazer with this outfit—I’d be on my own worst dressed list—and since my other jacket needed washing, I went jacketless. Even after washing, I was too lazy to change, it was a Lazy Sunday.

****

I heard some commentary about my laundromat today. It was not favorable—“I just want to avoid Boulevard Jourdan” (Boulevard Jourdan being the street we live on; I have no idea what the name of the laundromat is.)—and this mystified me, and I said so.

The laundry is pretty much exactly what I want from a laundromat. There’s always two washing machines open and there’s a friendly older man who always happens to be there at the same time I am—we exchange nods and have incredibly meaningful conversations about the nuances of doing laundry (Him: “I think you should use [insert laundry vocabulary here].” Me: “What?” Him, amazingly still in French, while pointing: [Laundry vocabulary.” Me: “Oh. Good idea.”). The downside is that the machine that accepts payment does not accept bills or five centime pieces, which of course I must always have a superfluous surplus of. Mitigating that downside is that the little old Asian lady who runs the place is always there at the same time as me, so she’ll always give you change. Also she gives away candy and cereal. Supposedly she complains if you try and put too many clothes in the washer, but I’ve brought some pretty big loads in and she’s never complained.

One good anecdote emerges per trip. Today, for example, a man (also in sweatpants with a track jacket—I feel we were one away from becoming a sociological curiosity) lost his five euro note. He needed the note to change so as to start the washer. He began calmly, rationally, methodically—he checked his pocket, his bag, and the rest. It was not in evidence. He then began to search the more strange places—on the table opposite him and his base of operations, asking people who had just come in. During the course of this search, he began to get agitated. “In-croy-able” (Unbelievable) became his catch phrase. I suggested that perhaps he had put it in the washer by accident. “No. Impossible.” Then he graduated to searching the likely places again with a manic rapidity. He laid out the other items in his pocket (pens, small change, wallet full of credit cards but empty of cash, cell phone) and organized them in neat rows on the table, as if their collective presence would conjure up the missing bill. He asked to see under my suitcase (I use it to transport my laundry). After searching those spaces proved futile, he searched some incredible places: his shoe, his armpit. He finally found it, but unfortunately when I glanced away. I can only assume it was in his ear.

****

I spent most of my day writing, chained to the computer. This is what I claim. No recent invention has been more damaging to my writing productivity than WiFi. Whenever I feel writer’s block coming on, I can just check my e-mail (it happened during the middle of this sentence).

This phenomenon became particularly pronounced during the writing of a French essay. I mean, the part that I accomplished today shouldn’t have been particularly onerous—I was just recapping a short story. But writer’s block struck me quite often, and there you go.

****

Orangina is a wonderful drink. Most French people seem to know this, as do many Americans. So you’d think they wouldn’t need to put up ridiculously odd advertisements, but an strange ad campaign has debuted recently, to perpetual wonderment.

I mean, it’s not often that you ask yourself, “Why is that giraffe in a red lingerie get-up drinking an Orangina and sitting on a melting ice cube?” when viewing an ad campaign. And this ad series has achieved that, a huge victory for its client—bestality porn sites of France. Besides the giraffe, there’s also a cactus in a cocktail dress, flowers in lingerie, and a deer in a binkini. And lest you think that the French are all about cheesecake, and don’t care about the considerable desire of women (and men!) to see some man-flesh, there’s also a ripped bear thrusting its pelvis (tastefully covered by a maple leaf. French commentary on Canada?) in the general direction of the camera. The tagline for the campaign is “naturellement pulpeuse” (naturally pulpy). Now I guess the rationale is that natural pulp is sexy and natural wild animals are also sexy (this is what the advertising world claims at least—I can only imagine the number of young giraffe teenagers starving themselves, vomiting even, to achieve that perfect body), and therefore they are a perfect match. I think this is it though.

Now, to be honest, these French aren’t the first to get all weird when the word ‘natural’ is mentioned. I remember an Aquafina commercial with a bear (always those bears!) complaining about how they didn’t want too natural or something like that. I remember it was notably incoherent. Anyway, something about the idea of ‘natural’ appears to send advertisers into a confused tizzy. Which is pretty strange to me, considering that the whole business is about naturalizing your desires (“Don’t worry, you really need this car.”)

****

Pretend this is written by someone else: Geez, blue sweatpants? What is this red S? That is a tattered white shirt? Who is this? Listen, buddy, I don’t know what closet you stumbled out of, but we try and dress like we care here. You’re my worst dressed of the day.

****

The RER was bothering a baby tonight. Understandable—it always teeters dangerously between Cité Universitaire and Denfert-Rochereau. But what was kind of interesting to see was the baby’s mom singing a lullaby. She cooed in a high pitched voice—and this was the clincher, I’m sure—and marched her fingers up her baby’s chest, until she pinched his ear, stretched out her face to comical proportions and buzzed at her, her tongue between her lips. The baby giggled and the mother continued and the rest of the trip was fine. No matter where you are, babies are the same—they love the same silly simple stuff.

Branly and Weather

The weather can always be relied upon as a topic of conversation. Especially for a Rochesterian; complaining about the harshness of winter is one way to stave it off. The weather seems so omnipresent that it would fade into a turgid topic, like discussing one’s own breathing. Yet it often has an infinitude of variation that makes it a worthwhile topic of conversation.

I know this because I just spent about fifteen minutes complaining about Rochester’s weather in French. My French has never seemed so vivid to me as when I spoke about that Rochester weather, or the unexpected coldness of San Francisco in summer. God, that sounds like a stupid thing to say—shouldn’t the most vivid subject be something of life or death?—but I’ve felt connected to the vicissitudes of the weather ever since they meant either a day home from school or a trudge through the snow.

The stakes are smaller in Paris. It has been gray the past few days, with that metallic cold permeating the air. But sometimes the brilliant sun redeems everything, and its presence conquers the cold. It’s no day off, but it’s a small pleasure.

****

I went to the Musée Branly with a French student today. I’d never heard of the Musée Branly before this visit to Paris, because it’s really new—from 2006. Jacques Chirac was a critical proponent of the project, a museum built to showcase France’s collections of indigenous art from Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The first sight of the museum was the wall carpeted by a garden. It wasn’t just ivy, the traditional creeping plant, but also moss and other plants. I’m not sure how they got most of the plants to defy gravity, but they did, and it looks great. The rest of the museum, from the Quai Branly on the Seine, appears to be encased in a bubble—a glass wall surrounds it. Inside, there is a garden, more in the Japanese style than anything else. Like all good parks, calm instantly banished the constant keen of the city.

The museum itself is relentlessly modern. Rust red cubes protrude from the rusted metallic building, shaped vaguely like one of those Imperial Destroyers in Star Wars. The interior’s design is consistent with the exterior; it does not revert to classicism. You walk up a white curling ramp to get to the museum proper. The ramp itself, actually, is a piece of art: movies and brain teasers in French are projected onto the space. Never have I seen so many people walk while staring simultaneously.

The exhibits itself are arranged cleverly, a bit too much self-satisfyingly so. The collection is arranged as a loop, and you can begin at any section via another system of ramps, these ones in earth brown, with the top being pock-marked in a way that suggests pueblo architecture.

Perhaps due to its modernism and relative young age, there was a scarcity of tourists. I heard English being spoken loudly once in my hour-and-a-half long visit, and that must be some sort of personal record. Nor is it simply a personal museum. It’s a Parisian record. The exhibits recognized it. The English signs weren’t very big or carefully translated. Nor were the security guards particularly harried or dictatorial. It was as purely Parisian a place as I’ve seen.

It’s impossible to find a place free of tourists in Paris proper, because the city relies so much on the tourist industry. While I want to avoid the obvious tourist traps, I honestly do not care overmuch about finding a ‘pure’ Parisian experience because the influence of tourism permeates and mixes everywhere.

Back to the museum. The art itself was fairly nice, and there was an exhibit upstairs called “The Aristocrat and His Cannibals.” Basically, it was about this one aristocrat during the height of the Age of Imperialism, and the way he exaggerated his voyages to make it seem as if the South Pacific housed another set of hungry cannibals in every island.

I guess I could insert a speech about how limited information inevitably creates cultural ignorance, but I won’t. Instead I’ll simply note that one of the archetypes of human existence is the exotic monster. The exotic monster is a beast that is human enough to scare, far enough to comfort, but close enough to be plausible. The South Pacific cannibal served the role that the Infidel Turk played in the Crusader days. And Al Qaeda would’ve played that role if they hadn’t acquired planes. Nowadays the drug dealer and his gang is probably the closest cultural equivalent to the exotic monster, although they are probably a little too close for comfort. But, as Tom Friedman says, the World is Flat. (If I ever favorably cite Tom Friedman in matters metaphorical or political again, please feel obligated to disable Microsoft Word and recommend an alternate hobby.)

****

I’m excited about the upcoming basketball season, so these rambling discursions are a quick break from Paris:

Predicted Standings, Eastern Conference:
1. Bulls
2. Pistons
3. Celtics
4. Magic
5. Cavs (with third-best record in Eastern conference)
6. Raptors
7. Bobcats
8. Wizards

Predicted Standings, Western Conference
1. Rockets
2. Suns
3. Spurs
4. Nuggets
5. Mavs (with fourth-best record in Western conference)
6. Jazz
7. Hornets
8. Warriors

ECF: Bulls over Pistons
WCF: Spurs over Mavs
Finals: Spurs over Bulls (unless Kobe is traded to Bulls for a fair price, which appears increasingly likely. Actually it’s useless making predictions before we know where Kobe’s going)

MVP: LeBron James
Rookie of the Year: Uh, Kevin Durant. Duh.
Most Improved Player: Not even worth predicting—it’ll be someone random.
Sixth Man of the Year: Manu Ginobili, like it should’ve been last year


Most Overrated Team: Celtics. There’s been a ton of hype around this team. Obviously they’re a story—Jesus, the Truth and the Big Ticket? But, uh, there’s no point guard on this team. Nor is there a bench. Also, Ray Allen didn’t play defense before this offseason’s double ankle surgery, and he’s going to do so now? And everyone seems to have forgotten that Doc Rivers runs this team, a man who cannot, famously decide on a rotation or draw up a defense against a high pick and roll. Meanwhile, both the Pistons and Bulls upgraded their benches, meaning that Doc will be slaughtered on the benches, and utilize the high pick-and-roll extensively. Doesn’t anyone remember that Doc’s the coach who blew the 2-0 lead in a five game series against the Pistons? Anyone? Anyway, this team will secure the division title because the Atlantic’s such a sorry division, but it’ll get bounced in the second round by the Pistons, and you’ll see an uncomfortable amount of Rip Hamilton gloating after running Ray Allen ragged through screens.

Explanations behind conference standings:

Eastern: What no one seems to realize is that the Bulls had the best point differential of any team in the East last year. Point differential is, of course, the best predictor of future results. So the Bulls should have been in the mid-50s as a win total last year. Furthermore, you take out stiff bodies PJ Brown, Malik Allen and corpulent Mike Sweetney, and give their minutes to Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah and Joe Smith, and that’s a huge improvement right there, even if the replacement platoon is merely average. Add in the Man from Wow Luol Deng’s impending breakout, and you have a formula for massive regular season success. That is without Kobe Bryant who I suspect will end up with the Bulls at a reasonable price. However, if they do not trade for Kobe, then they will probably lose to the Pistons—my pick is what’s known as a ‘homer’ pick—as Ben Gordon is too small to matchup with the Pistons’ big backcourt, and Thabo Sefolosha still a bit too raw to be trusted with critical playoff minutes.
No Nets because they overachieved last year with Vince Carter in a contract year; his performance will wane. Jason Kidd’s due to start acting his age any year now.

No Heat because everyone aside from Wade, Shaq, Davis and Mourning sucks. The first two will miss a ton of time and be rusty otherwise. Also Shaq’s value is really deceptive—he might get you a ton of points, but his rebounding and defense leave much to be desired, and he’s worth at least five fastbreak points for the other team a game. Wade’s injured and missed the preseason, so he’ll probably be rusty. Mourning is good in spurts but is old. Davis is fairly good but probably skipped kindergarten—he never shares.

Bobcats are, in my opinion, underrated.

Wizards are overrated but do have the highly entertaining Agent Zero.

Western Conference:

Rockets will enjoy health and watch Yao (improved, too: 28 ppg) and T-Mac destroy the league in the regular season. Luis Scola will be good. Point guard will be slightly above average. What’s most important to realize is not that the Rockets will be that good, but that the Spurs, Suns and Mavs won’t be as good in the regular season. The Spurs because they always ease up on the regular season, the Suns will rest their players (Nash and Grant Hill especially) because they’ll win the Pacific and lock themselves into a top-3 seed regardless, the Mavs because they overachieved in the regular season last year anyway. Unfortunately for all things good in the NBA (i.e. besides their own team, all NBA fans want the Suns to win), this state of affairs will lead to the Rock-Paper-Scissors setting up incorrectly: the Suns are Scissors, the Mavs Paper and the Spurs Rock. The winner is determined by how the draw sets up. Honestly, the top five of the West makes me uncomfortable to predict, as I bet we’ll see a lot of gaming amongst the elite (Spurs, Suns, Mavs, and Rockets on their heels) to set up the draw favorably.

I like Nuggets more than most people do; they played quite well when both Carmelo and AI were in the lineup together. No one seems to realize that their record was somewhat deflated by no AI early, no Carmelo in the middle and a limited amount of time to adjust to one another. This will work better year two.

Jazz are slightly overrated this year.

I think people are underestimating LeBron this year; his FT% was awful last year, an aberration. Supposedly he’s been working on his shooting this summer—he certainly shot quite well in the Tournament of the Americas (although this was against the JV, so take with grain of salt). Combine that with natural growth and 30/7/7 with good percentages doesn’t sound farfetched. Those are MVP numbers, no question about it, although Tim Duncan’s still the better player.

The MIP will go to someone we can’t predict at the beginning of the season; that’s practically the definition of the award.

Manu should have won the award last year, and the Spurs always suppress the Big Three’s minutes played in the regular season, which means Manu will play off the bench.

****

Although the phrase pop psychology exists in France, the concept does not seem to have as much hold on the French psyche as it does in America. In America, people refer to themselves as “depressed” in the nonclinical sense all the time; similarly, one can refer to another as “schizophrenic” as having multiple personalities. Apparently saying either in France is like actually saying one has said mental malady, which is understandably bad.

****

So I was waiting for the train at St. Michel-Notre Dame. To my left, my group of worst dressed: a dude in chaps and a slicked-up Mohawk, with some others with suspected applications of gel. The dude dressed in chaps was taking the time to show his dance moves, which spasmodically shifted between his renditions of the Rooster (I think this is the name; it’s the one where you grab your ankle and thrust your knee towards your face, which is jackhammering downwards in a pecking motion. It’s one of my favorite joke dances, along with the following dance…), the Worm (the breakdance move where you lie on the ground and convulse upwards like an electrocuted worm), and other odd whipping motions of arms and legs that your correspondent is hard pressed to describe, let alone put a name to.

At any rate, into this scene strode a man clutching a woman. He grabbed a kiss from her. I almost thought they were pretending to be Romeo and Juliet. The man was balding. The woman was middle-aged. “Quickly” he muttered, and kissed her again. Then they went to the end of the quai, where they stood placidly. Me and the breakdancing group were quite perplexed; we shared a shrug: they did realize that the next train wasn’t coming for eight minutes, right? And what the heck does a middle-aged couple need to go around acting like they were twelve? The question remaining unanswered, I went back to my book and they went back to their convulsions.

****

There has been an unfortunate infestation of accordion players with background music on the Metro recently. To top it off, they don’t even have the grace to play La Vie en Rose. Not playing La Vie en Rose when you’re an accordion player in Paris is like not playing “Take Me Out to The Ballpark” when you’re a street performer at a ballgame; it’s an obvious choice because only ogres dislike either. I hate the accordion aside from renditions of La Vie en Rose, and I especially hate players who use background music. So hopefully this plague will cease.

Being Put On Hold Has Never Been So Rewarding

I was sweating over this phone call.

I made a foolish error in ordering tickets for the Paris Masters tournament in a week and Kanye West/Common Concert on November 17th. You see, French ones look an awful lot like sevens. In America, there’s a bar under the one, but France doesn’t have that. So, for me, many ones look like sevens, until I realize—“No, there’s no 75h00!” That error, though, is minor; when you write “75 Boulevard Jourdan” instead of “15 Boulevard Jourdan,” this causes your tickets to go to the wrong address.

To rectify this error, I had to call the ticket office, a prospect that terrified me. As I said earlier, when I hung up, I wiped off a sheen of sweat from my forehead. Not because the French involved was particularly difficult—I ended up speaking pretty well—but because the costs were so high. I worked it out, with the help of a very understanding call woman, who must have thought I was some mentally-demaged case, with the speed at which I read my order number. Anyway, instead of getting the tickets mailed to me, I’ll have to be proactive about the whole enterprise and pick them up.

Incidentally, to refer back to the title, being put on hold was great, because instead of boring ambience music, I got to hear music from the Lion King. This was obviously a marketing ploy, as the ticket company is responsible for peddling tickets to Le Roi Lion which has just opened. Nevertheless, whatever the motives, it was infinitely more enjoyable than listen to aggressively soothing harp cords with orca calls as harmony.

****

I’m a member of the course called “Paris Lecture Series.” I haven’t mentioned it because there hasn’t been a meeting. There hasn’t been a meeting because the course is entirely self-directed. Being overwhelmed by an avalanche of trivial errands, I haven’t, aside from the lecture last week, had a chance to actually engage in this course. I still haven’t as of now. But I did make a move towards doing so by visiting the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre and getting their schedules of lectures; I’ll be going to one tomorrow.

Anyway, the reason I say this is to relate this anecdote: both of these museums naturally have security. This is the age of terrorism after all. Anyway, they search bags, naturally. Now, it’s my impression that in the US, when you have your bag searched, you hand it to the security dude, who then opens it him- or herself. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this is just how I remember it. Anyway, the French security guards were very insistent that I open it myself. I don’t really have an explanation for this; perhaps they’re worried about something being triggered if they themselves open it? I don’t know, like I said. But one thing that’s true about security factotums around the world is that the minor steps of procedure are vitally important to them, both because supervising those minor steps is their job, and because it makes them feel powerful.

****
The final Harry Potter has stormed into France and has been met with a comparative shrug. Certainly the effort is being put forth; I see many advertisements for Harry. But there are very few people actually reading Harry Potter, comparatively speaking. It certainly seems popular when measured against other books, but when compared to its own high standards, it falls short.

The advertisements, incidentally, try very hard. Unlike the jolly Harry of America, or the British Harry of…uh…Britain, Harry Potter of France has morphed into Existentialist Harry. The cover of the final book features Harry on a cliff, staring out to sea, storm clouds behind him. It’s some mixture of Romantic Hero and Existentialist Brooder. But the French don’t seem to have taken to the pitch as enthusiastically as other nations.

****

Delicious tart: chocolate on top of apples. I didn’t catch the name, but mmmm!

****

Worst Dressed: Wearing a fedora, dress shirt, and sweatpants. Either someone hasn’t done his laundry for a while, or has multiple personalities who want to dress in different ways.

****

I spent most of the day writing, which is why there’s a paucity of material here. And writing about my own writing is tedious, so I’ll avoid it. This is just my explanation.

Translation

One should never translate too literally. The meaning too often loses its vitality. Take for example: pharmacie. The direct translation of this is “pharmacy” (probably not too much of a mind-bender right there), but the institutions are completely different.

In the US, when I hear the word ‘pharmacy,’ I think of CVS. That’s the archetypal pharmacy. It’s the pharmacy as supermarket. It’s impersonal. It is the Swiss Army Knife of stores. Basically, it is a very convenient place to do drive-by shopping.

It was with this image in mind that I went to the ‘pharmacie’ in Paris. I was wrong. I knew that it was different—I knew that the exams to become a pharmacist were very competitive in France. But there is always a gap between what you know intellectually and what you know unconsciously. Unconsciously, for me, the ‘pharmacie’ was the perfect place to grab some saline solution and a contact case and leave.

Confirming my initial impression was the ubiquity of the pharmacie sign. The pharmacie sign is a green cross which flashes in different patterns and occasionally provides information regarding date, time and temperature. All pharmacies share the same sign, which to my American mind, signifies chain and hence impersonal, thus allowing for an in-and-out shopping experience. One thing I miss about America is the in-and-out shopping experience. There are times—when you’re buying something trivial, like soap or saline solution; or when you’re buying something embarrassing—when you simply want to dash in and out and continue living out your day. In France, however, every shopping experience is a social interaction. I generally enjoy this; the difference between friendly store proprietor and Silent Cashier Dude is often favorable, but not always. Anyway, I thought I would be getting this type of experience with the pharmacie.

However, upon entrance today, the difference confronted me immediately. France’s ‘pharmacie’ reminds me more of a beauty salon or boutique. All pharmacies are quite small: perhaps a smaller restaurant in the US. From what I can tell, having looked in quite a few pharmacies since now, most products rest against the wall itself, with shelves bolted in. There is usually only one shelf that is disconnected from the rest of the floor. There is no ‘cashier’ area; usually the cashiers are spread out. Actually, cashier is an approximation, only a slightly accurate one. A better word would probably be workstation. Each workstation has a pharmacist assigned to it. Purchases can be made there, but consultations also. The pharmacist serves as another rung in the health-care ladder. From what I could overhear, they suggest quite extensive treatments. There is also a sense of discussion between the pharmacist and the patient; the patient genuinely doesn’t know. In most of my other shopping experiences, the French are very definitive on what they want. They know what they want. If they speak to the owners or proprietors, it is only as an instrument. The pharmacist-patient relationship is one of means.

To contrast, the shopper-proprietor relationship is summarized by the question, “Could you get me this?” and the pharmacist-patient relationship is “What should I do?” I stepped into the pharmacy treating it as the former question, and so I grabbed my saline solution and was surprised by the surprise of the pharmacist, who probably expected me to have some arcane question on my health(a man next to me was complaining about his foot pains, which [and this is so incredible that I’m simultaneously sure I must have something wrong and not knowing what I could’ve gotten wrong], “recur two days every three weeks.”).

****

Incidentally, to go back to the pharmacie sign: its green flashing is very vivid against the buildings. If ever there was or ever there will be a film noir movie set in Paris, there should be or should have been a black-and-white shot of a pharmacie sign casting its light outwards, in two directions, rhythmically. It would look eerie.

****

I just went to a restaurant today that I had been certain had been closed every other time I’d passed it. It pulls its blinds down, and its door is recessed from the street, given the aforementioned impression that it was closed. But it turns out that it wasn’t.

This strikes me as a pretty inefficient advertising method, especially for wandering foot traffic. But, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I don’t think French restaurant proprietors are devoted to selling things as much as genuine pride in their own wares.

****

I also had work again today. That was quite fun, especially since, on account of a lack of a strike, I didn’t have to walk.

We were there for two reasons. First, we saw editing of a rough cut of “Clothes of the World,” which focused on Los Angeles. From what I could see, editing film strikes me as something of a misnomer and somewhat different than editing in other enterprises. Like editing other pieces, editing film focuses, with microscope-like precision, on the small details. Should I end this scene a frame earlier or later? Which angle should I use? Where should I put my archival footage? Etc.

Now, what’s makes editing film different from editing writing, for example, is that editing is more a part of execution. Unedited film is a mess of angles and a hodgepodge of chronology. It needs editing to become coherent. On the other hand, for writers other than myself, editing is more akin to polishing. Something coherent has been executed. Editing writing is stripping away or adding on to enhance the structure already there. With film, on the other hand, editing is assembling the structure.

The rough cut was in English—all of the Angelenos spoke English, and their voices had not yet been dubbed over (we’ll actually be helping with transcribing and translating their speech), so we were getting the English words. Between the language and our cultural familiarity, we were able to turn the tables on our French editor—we knew what was going on. So when this one woman said, in response to the question, “What do you do?”, “I’m a writer…a stylist…I do some acting. Some modeling,” we knew to burst out laughing, while the Frenchman wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Everyone in Los Angeles, we had to explain, has a script and does some acting.

The other reason we were there was to carry out some of the grunt work, of finding photos for the documentary. It’s oddly hard to find pictures of surfers and surfer culture that are sufficiently large. The three of us, we all put our heads together, and we didn’t get much good stuff.

****

The other major activity was an event variously described as a “cocktail” and a “rencontre” (meeting). This is another example of not translating too literally. This makes it sound like some sort of party or something. In reality, in an American college, it would’ve been called (with some degree of irony) “a mixer.” The mixer was with a neighboring school, EPP, or École de Psychologues Practiens. Like so many French institutions, its logo is a vaguely rendered, colorful, jumping person with arms outstretched.

The school, we had been told, was attended mostly by women, in contrast to ISEP, which is made up mostly by men. So guess who signed up for the mixer? 80% of the male population of Stanford-in-Paris, and 100% of the straight male population. Quite amusing. Also quite convenient, seeing as there were five or six (I forget the exact number) girls there in attendance, providing a perfect gender balance.

We started out, as with any good mixer, divided like a middle school dance. We discussed the typical questions: How do you like Paris? What are you studying? (Just us; the European system forces students along a certain path throughout college) What do you want to do? And so on. After ritual had been observed, we could then delve into the more interesting cultural questions.

Anyway, two of the girls expressed an interest to go to the United States after graduation for work. When we asked, where?, they didn’t really know. One thing that’s interesting about French attitudes towards America is that the French don’t have that unconscious, emotional conception of how big America is. They know intellectually how big the country is, but emotionally they seem to think it’s all more-or-less the same, and not quite as big as it is. In other words, they think of America as being a little more like France than it actually is. Of course, Americans are the same way about France. I’m the one who just complained about the lack of fast shopping experiences.

The other good thing was how little English was spoken. Unlike ISEP students, who want to practice their English at all opportunities, the EPP students steadfastly refused to speak back at us in English, making us all the more stubborn to speak in French. Which is the way.

****

Worst dressed: where did you get a neon yellow dress shirt? I’m impressed by the dedication but horrified by the results.

****

Nicolas-Cecilia continues! I wonder how long this story will stumble on.

La Grève and the Media

We surveyed, in our press class, the media responses to the strike. France, like many European countries, has a partisan press: Le Figaro is right, L’Humanité is leftist, etc., etc. It’s an alternative model and one that is worth thinking about.

Take for instance the media articles written in the wake of the strike. The coverage of each paper aligned with their politics: L’Humanité declared the strike a “record success” both in terms of turnout and intensity; on the other hand, Le Figaro announced that the government had “divided the unions” by negotiating with the “powerful conductor’s union,” which, by cutting a separate deal, dealt a “betrayal” to its union brethren. These are two separate views of the world; practically the only thing agreed upon is that there was a strike and that the FGAAC, the conductor’s union, cut a deal separately with the government.

On the other hand, American news organizations, by ethics and law, are nonpartisan and “objective” in their news reporting.

The difference between American and European news system represents no less than a different philosophy of news. I don’t necessarily believe that the media is a representative of the populace, but its obsessions often correspond with the populace’s obsessions, so by looking at the media, we can often see the actual culture through that.

The American news system embraces positivism, more or less. Positivism is a ‘scientific’ view of the world; positivists in history or sociology would insist on scientific methods. The scientific method is the method of the disinterested observer. The American journalist tries to uphold that method: with balancing quotes, equal time and the like, the idea is to represent the world as it is. By logical extension, the creed holds that only in hearing diverse views can we get at the truth.

By contrast, the European ideological media is more of a postmodern perspective. There are no objective observers. We are all under thrall to our biases. We should therefore admit to them and interpret our news through that framework. The goal is not truth per se, but truth in the service of ideological.

Yuk. Typing that last sentence made me feel bad. But the European model is far more honest to ourselves (keeping in mind all my biases—god is the American media bad) than the American model is.

Here is the most charitable thought experiment I can think of: you have a perfectly objective observer, the perfect journalist, in other words. He will see the truth and report it perfectly. Similarly, his editor is perfectly objective. The question is, however, what do they report first? Simply in choosing an article, we must admit that some articles are more important than others and hence allow a slant in. Of course journalists and editors are not objective; they have pet projects, they are often in a pretty high tax bracket. Culturally most of them are professional’s children and have grown up in the urban upper middle class. They have their biases. To try to pretend otherwise is a sham.

One of the honored formulae of American journalism is the balancing quotation. So, if Republican Hack X says “Democrats enjoy choking young puppies to death and drinking blood,” Democratic Hack X gets to reply, “We’ve got a problem with George Bush lying about Iraq.” This example, of course, shows the problem: the debate is pretty ridiculous. Republican Hack X shouldn’t have had his quotation published; it’s pretty freaking dumb. This is stretching the issue but not by much. Consider any debate with global warming or some other politically charged scientific issue: usually there’s a reasonable sounding scientist who provides a scientific view, and some Christian “scientist” who lives off of the right-wing charity network who says, “Global warming is absolutely false and never existed.” And the media generally takes each side seriously at face. If you don’t believe me, reread the Intelligent Design articles from a few years ago. The whole debate existed solely because there was a “scientific” imprimatur behind the Creationist, er, Intelligent Design side. If we had a scientifically literate media, this controversy would have been nipped in the bud.

Typically at this point in the argument, or even before, someone will interrupt me and say, “But doesn’t this approach turn the writer into the arbiter of truth?” And I say, “Of course it does,” because that’s the point. The point of having a journalist is to figure out the truth as best he can for me, because I don’t have the capability to. Journalists already do this anyway. Ask yourself why it’s always a Republican/Democratic balancing quotation system; why is there no LaRouche voice? Isn’t the journalist deciding in that instance that the LaRouche voice is not valuable to the debate? Of course that journalist is, and for good reason, because Lyndon LaRouche is crazy. And that’s fine.

Now, what the European approach gets right is that it presents a view. Is it a skewed view? Certainly so. But it admits it; everyone knows which way it’s likely to be skewed, and can be appropriately skeptical. Whereas I have no idea what the individual biases of the average American writer are, so I have no idea what to be skeptical of. For some famous writer, I can know that Nedra Pickler focuses on the most trivial comments and can hence safely be ignored, that Judith Miller is too credulous of high governmental sources, that Seymour Hersh is too credulous of cynical middling governmental sources, and so on. (Incidentally, the last, while true, is nowhere near as egregious as the first two. That’s my American journalism standards creeping in—I must have balance! Truth is always at the middle of any debate, of course.) That’s great, for their articles, I’m better-informed. But what am I to make of the relatively anonymous newspaper writer? Nothing of his specific individual biases; merely that he is most likely a member of certain demographic groups and hence probably has these views…Whereas, with the European system, I can be much more certain about the views that I can ascribe to him, creating what I think to be a better system.

Now part of the problem with comparing the two nation’s news systems is the difference in the people. The French are, Cecilia Sarkozy notwithstanding, far more serious about their news and that’s reflected in the seriousness of their news reporting. Whereas I’m not sure that were the European system imported to America, we wouldn’t get a partisan trivialities flung at one another. Which would be an improvement—now we get partisan trivialities dressed up as “objective” reportage (Is Hillary Clinton’s Cleavage a Problem?), but well short of the standard that we should be holding ourselves to.

****

Worst-dressed: This man wasn’t exactly poorly dressed, but it was an odd choice to wear a blazer, a sweater-vest with dress shirt and tie, and socks with cartoon cats. Because the socks were so at odds with the rest of the outfit, I wonder, was that some sort of concession? (“Honey, you always dress so conservatively. How about spicing it up a little?” “Sure, let me put on my cat socks.”)

****

From the quotes coming back to haunt you file (this is somewhat paraphrased). Sarkozy, in his autobiography: “Cecilia and I have gone through some difficulties, but now I’m sure we’ll be together forever. I’m more sure of that than I’ve been of anything.”

****

And, just because I didn’t have enough fun the first time, there’s another strike on November 20th.

****

There’s a beggar who seems to have made the RER B his stomping ground. I’ve seen him the last three days in a row. He’s trying to sell guide books. I always say “pas de monnaie” (no change). I think he’s catching on to me; he asked today, “Avez-vous le monnaie aujourd’hui, n’est pas?” (You’ve got change today, right?) with the tone that there’s no way I’d unburdened myself of change three days in a row before I made it to his charming mug, right? Well I just said, “Non” (Nope), and he was quite frustrated.

The Keep and Upcoming Opera

We’re going to see Puccini’s Tosca next Monday, and in preparation, we had a speaker come to inform us about the opera, in English this time. Both the language and an actual plot summary made this preparatory lecture much better and more informative than the last stultifying one.

I’m very excited for the opera, even though there won’t be an English translation, only a French one. But because I’ll be able to read the French rather than try to hear it, I anticipate that it’ll be much more easy to understand.

It’s strange that opera is lumped in with classical music as a fuddly-duddly old art form. I find the old operas to be far more accessible and enjoyable than old classical pieces, because of their emphasis on a big bold statement: the booming voices, lush arrangements of the music, instantly recognizable melodies and delicious melodrama means that the gestures are very easily appreciated by the opera ignoramus (which I count myself as). It’s a matter of opportunity, I think: all the operas I have been to thus far in my life are because of school. If the operas were cheaper or better advertised, I would probably go to see more operas. But because operas, like classical music and high art, have been locked into a snobbish club, I don’t hear about them and so I don’t go.

****

We went to the Chateau de Vincennes, a castle that has served the roles of fortification, prison and bakery. Just the noted French talent for conservation on display again—what other nation would think, “OK. We’ve got a prison here. Some of our best and brightest, including Denis Diderot, as well as scores of the people, were unjustly imprisoned here. It’s one of the symbols of a hated, awful regime. You know what we should use it for? A bakery!”

Jokes aside, the guided tour that we took was very interesting and informative. It’s always nice to follow a long disquisition in a foreign language, and also nice to get a joke in a foreign language. I feel like I’m getting better at this French thing. Don’t worry, I’ll forget some easy verb like “to open” soon.

No matter what language these guided tours are given in, however, the format is the same: the guide introduces him/herself, acts peppy, throws in a disclaimer about the clarity of her speech, “If I speak too fast, or I’m not clear, speak up,” and then launches into the topic with a barrage of details, pausing to take questions from the audience or pose them herself. What you’re left with, even in the best ones I’ve taken (with the notable exception of the handheld audio tour from Alcatraz), is a bunch of interesting facts and statistics, which you then pass on to show how cultured you are. So here’s the interesting fact from the tour (actually more of an interesting anecdote, and actually more revealing than interesting in-of-itself): Sainte-Chappelle, the magisterial cathedral tucked in the corner of the yard of the Chateau de Vincennes, has a crescent moon insignia carved into several of the flying buttresses. What was interesting about this was what our guide said, “I assure you, it’s not Muslim. It’s because of…” There was a chuckle in unison from the crowd at the Muslim part. Of course it’s implausible that a Catholic King would build a monument to Islam in the Middle Ages, but what was revealing was the extent to which the guide told us that it was not Islamic in origin.

More interesting, however, than the barrage of random facts was the attention and knowledge that the attendees lavished on the tour. These people knew their stuff about French history, and weren’t shy about sharing it with one another. They, furthermore, were serious but not grave about their French history. They really were engaged—the attention was rapt throughout the hour-long tour, something that I’ve never seen in the US.

****

Trickle-down economics at its most literal: it was common practice in eighteenth-century Paris, according to Daniel Roche in The People of Paris, to take crumbs from the nobility and sell them to the lower classes for their meals. Tripe at nine sous, veal at twelve. That this was simultaneously an option for economizing and variety tells us much, mostly bad, about the common people of Paris.

Beyond eating other’s scraps and hoping the grain harvests came through, the people of Paris were beset in other ways. A potent combination of corrupt police and petty moralists attempted to close off their common people’s lifestyle, from bars to gambling. Much ink and effort was spilled over reforming the poor, and so it’s no wonder that between hunger and contempt, the common people thought of themselves as a distinct group in opposition to their higher castes in society.

The Chateau de Vincennes could not have helped matters much for the public relations standpoint. It is far removed from central Paris, probably making it a somewhat mysterious entity. Seeing it could not help much to dispel one’s fears: the inside boasts barrack-like buildings and the donjon itself appears appropriately menacing. It appears to be as impenetrable as a Skull and Bones meeting.

Besides the symbols of the Bastille and the Chateau de Vincennes, Louis XV suffered by not being his father. Unlike his father, he was not a skillful politician, however you assess his intentions. So while the Bastille still stood and official moralism still persecuted during the Sun King’s reign, his son’s reputation was not as luminous and so he could not dazzle the citizenry to distraction. That was the source of the Herod rumors, the bathing-in-infant’s blood rumors and the general distrust of Louis XV. Once people start seriously considering the possibility of your having bathed in infant’s blood, you are pretty much done as a ruler people can trust, and successful governance is at least partially founded on trust.

To compensate for official incompetence and corruption, the people began enforcing their own brand of justice. Hence we can see that “[c]onsumers imposed their laws, and used taverns and smoking-saloons as and when they liked” (Roche 255) and “[e]veryone feared vagrants, wanderers and strangers, who were suspect more for their rootlessness than their manners.” (Roche 247)

What is interesting is that the laws of justice were being defined oppositionally and ad-hoc. So the common people began to distrust their government, and did not bother with their minor edicts, and went to the police as they needed to. The other opposition showed by the second quotation is that there is a distinct community being created here, one that lets in some and pushes others out. This community clearly did not have official rights to do this, but its informal justice was tolerated and even encouraged by the authorities.

This is a marked difference with the present. The French appear to detest multiculturalism and les communautés, what with their headscarf-banning and DNA testing. While there is controversy now, the French view appears to be that there are no subgroups within France, only Frenchmen, with one common interest. Of course, what happened in between now and then was the Revolution, and I suspect the bloody procession of factions has something to do with the lack of appeal for identity politics.

Weekend in Provence

A feast lives on in my gut. There seems to be a block lodging into my block. These are the results of the Bings’ largesse. But let’s begin with the beginning.

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We started out in Gare de Lyon on Friday. It was the second day of the strike. The unions were confused, divided. On Thursday, apparently, all the transportation unions were aligned together: neither SNCF nor RATP functioned. This was not the case on Friday; the trains, while late, still functioned and the metro returned to limited service. On the other hand, the Cite Universitaire RER stop remained closed. But the crowds were incredulous that this was so; I was not the only one inspecting the handwritten signs early in the morning.

After buying some provisions for the (presumably) long train ride, I walked to Gare de Lyon. I passed through the 13th Arrondisement to get there. About ten minutes into the walk in that particular section, something struck me as different about this particular Arrondisement. A memory floated back from earlier in the quarter, from my history class.

It is this: if you look at a map of Paris and draw an imaginary line from the middle-top of Paris, dance around the Hotel de Ville and continue on, you have a pretty good division of class in most of the modern era. The east was the poorer, more industrial section; the west, the richer, more commercial section. Political loyalties can be deduced from the demographics; the east is more socialist and the west more Gaullist. The political loyalties are reflected in the monuments erected in each section of the city. The west features the military monuments of Pais; the east, monuments to the Nation (Place de la Republique, for example).

Knowing this fact as I walked through the 13th really unified the meaning of the various sights. This is a district that has abandoned, graffitied buildings (the former is very rare; the latter, not so much) and cranes (also rare) constructing new luxury buildings. There’s a block devoted to knockoffs wrapped in plastic emblazoned with excited Asian characters and wild colors. I saw businessmen in gray pinstriped suits and red glasses (businessmen seem to love red-framed glasses) and young kids’ clothes imitate American hip-hop culture. “Gentrifying,” is the word to summarize the visual experience. Standing on the left bank Seine, near the Bibliotheque Francois Mitterand, I saw this lining the river: parking lots and a crane pouring junk into a dump truck. I immediately had a vision of the district transformed, with stores perched directly on the embankments, and saw a neutral space, a waste.

Waste is not a quality I associate with the French. I’m certain the 30-second shower-spurts of the Fondation that I’ve written about previously are a way to combat wasted water, and this sort of attitude pervades. Almost all public bathrooms’ faucets only dispense cold water—hot water takes up too much energy. The buildings utilize every square inch of space, generally, except for this area of the Seine. There are some buildings, governmental mostly, but they are the exception in this area. It is devoid.

Once I reached the train station, we started waiting. Our meeting time was purposefully set an hour early, on the excellent theory that if you set a meeting earlier than you need to, the late people will show up on time. The downside is that waiting is one of the most boring things in the world, because, by common agreement, everything interesting is about to happen.

Our waiting was rewarded earlier than I expected.

When we started walking towards the train, I immediately grasped the problem, that because our train was late, due to the strike, it was overcrowded. There was a river of people flowing every which way, like whitewater, and it didn’t help that someone parked a baggage car (like on airport runways) in the middle of the pathway. Much shoving, pushing and jostling occurred as we tried to surmount the obstacle. An older woman fell, with an angry accusatory look on her face; I caught her elbow and helped break her fall. I didn’t see the assailant, but he was rewarded with a “putain.”

There are two types of ticket on a European train: reserved and non-reserved. We had reserved, which meant that we reserved a specific seat. Some people with non-reserved seats, however, had a problem with this point of law.

I had scarcely settled into my empty seat when a conflict broke out behind me. There was our program director, assuring someone that she was sorry, but we had purchased a group reserved ticket and that therefore he should vacate the seat. He refused and then she said (in French), “Well I’ll go get the controleur.” I had no idea what was going on at this time, but it seemed to get straightened out.

Up ahead of me in my field of vision, a similar drama was playing out. One of the other members of the staff was attempting to resolve the problem, but it was not happening. The antagonist was a sports-coated, green-shirted, droopy-faced man who (apparently—I could not hear at the time) utilized the argument that a) he wasn’t moving, and b) a strike is a quintessentially French experience; he, as a Frenchman, has had to bear the price of the strike, and therefore, as a sort of hazing experience to gain entrance into the club, the student affected should have to stand throughout the journey. In response, our staff member pointed out that everyone was suffering because of the strike, and that at any rate, we had a legal right to the seat. The passengers were commenting amongst each other all the while. The student had the tunnel vision particular to those who are wondering, “Why did this happen to me?”

In front of me, a goateed, graying French man on the heavier side dressed in all black had, at the beginning of the train trip, started working on his laptop, but as the conflict played out behind him, he put down the laptop and became progressively more frustrated. After something—I do not know what the trigger was—happened, he reacted: his face contorted, he placed his laptop down, and spun out of his seat and faced the agitator. He proceeded to deliver, punctuated with thrusts of a pointed figure, a diatribe so coherent, organized, forceful, angry, rhythmic and musical, that I’m sorry I did not transcribe it; the translated insults below do not capture the fury in his words:

--You are dishonest
--Putain
--Con-ard (asshole; misheard as canard, or duck)
--You are a bad representative of our country. You are why many people think the French are rude, angry, etc.
--You are a jackass.

At the end of this flagellation, everyone clapped in the train car. The irritant, who had spent the entire time with face inclined, regarding the ranter impassively, continued to show no reaction. Soon the controleurs (conductors) dressed in their gray flannel suits that practically announce bureaucracy, arrived once again on the scene. They did not make much progress. He doggedly insisted that he would not move. Finally the impasse was broken when a woman gave up her seat, somehow bizarrely weaving in that she would only give up her seat to a Frenchman.

That solved that, and the rest of the ride went smoothly. Apparently, though, this fifty-year old insect attempted to hit on the students sitting near him.

****

We arrived in Avignon and promptly boarded a bus. It was afternoon; the light was filtered. The countryside passed by, filled with fields and occasional houses. The Provencal countryside was not particularly extraordinary (but it was interesting), but the number of plastic half-cylinders suspended over the fields was very interesting—I’d never seen that technique used, whether in France, England or the US. I presume it’s a sort of a greenhouse effect.

After a long bus ride, we arrived in Arles, a small town of 50,000. At the time of our arrival, I didn’t really form an impression of Arles beyond the dark and the wind. After spending an hour waiting for dinner walking around Arles, I discovered that it was dark, windy and small in a good way.

We went to dinner, which was only the first sumptuous meal amongst many. The décor, like many French restaurants, was eclectically odd: a bodhisaatva statue (or perhaps Hindu God), abstract paintings, electric candles, and a glass heart hung above a fireplace. We got eggplant, a three-fish platter, and a good dessert. The program director, Estelle, confessed (in French) that, “Honestly, Provencal food is better than Parisian food.”

I would come to find that judging by the meals we had in the trip, this is true. However, the amount of money spent per meal was almost certainly greater on the trip than on the average meal.

****

I was reminded of the intense association cold has with snot in the morning in Arles. The wind cut, whipped, swirled, buffeted us and sliced straight to bone. In the center of a cloudless sky, the sun shone with brilliant sharp clarity. All this caused my nose to begin running, the wind making my snot cuttingly cold on the bridge of my nose, and I was returned to winter in Rochester, with the hunched walk and buried hands.

The cold dance, a close relative of the pee-pee dance, seized us. The cold dance is this: bend your knees slightly, shake the legs and keep the blood moving.

All this formed a clear contrast with the actual tour itself. Our guide dressed herself in loose clothing, with a jacket not much heavier than mine, wearing flip-flops on her feet. The houses of Arles reminded me of the Caribbean—they evoked summer. The were in light whites and browns, and their shutters were turquoise, blue and red. Van Gogh added another layer of mockery: the famous picture of the Café at night is a site at Arles.

It was far too cold in Arles to appreciate the buildings, the history, or the ancient Roman ruins. I loved the arena not for the stories of gladiators and bullfighting but because it was a shield against the wind. As we left for lunch, I noticed that a block of houses had their shutters shut. Their flat expanses were like a fortresses’. When they are open, I thought, they must look wonderful. And they’ll be open when it’s warm.

****

Lunch was a surprise. We drove, apparently aimlessly, through the countryside, before the bus descended on a solitary house. Our feet crunched on gravel as we got there. If we were in America, we’d be at one of those rural diners advertised off of a highway: “JOHNNY’S DINNER 12 MILES AT EXIT #4—BURGERS!”

This was no diner. The meal was duck-themed: foie gras as the starter and duck as the “entrée” (in the English sense; entrée in French means appetizer, which makes more sense, seeing as the translation is “entrance”). The interior of the restaurant was very homey—most of the diners who wren’t a part of a group ate in what looked like a living room, while we ate in a patio.

Foie gras provoked the usual discussion and thoughts about the morality of food. One cannot help but think that some poor duck had been force-fed for the entirety of its sedentary, miserable life in order for me to have a few fleeting moments of pleasure. The usual arguments were dredged up, including the preceding one, which meant with the response that “it is only the natural order,” which strikes me as a misplaced retort, seeing as we defy the natural order when it suits us on other occasions, why not now? Then again, I ate the foie gras, so it’s not as if I’m entirely blameless or less than hypocritical. But it’s hard, with how detached we are from our food, both in the making and the harvesting, to keep in mind the sacrifices that are inherent to enjoy what is a luxury item. At any rate, I don’t particularly enjoy foie gras, and if I never eat it again, it will probably be for reasons of lack of enjoyment, not for moral reasons, which is a pretty hypocritical, cowardly thing to do. The main course, incidentally, was spectacular.

Then we hit the road again.

****

We ended up at an abbey. The drive there was spectacular; while the bus picked its way around the turns of a mountain, we admired the vistas. The little villages perched on crags like barnacles on a column; the fields of trees; the dramatic slope of the valleys: an entire world opened itself us in our safe confines.

The abbey itself is like all religious institutions in France: it has acquired the stillness of a museum. There are a few pilgrims, but they like you reserve themselves in respectful silence. The extraordinary smoothness and length of the walls and the tranquil central courtyard reinforce this “monastic” silence. It’s almost enough to make you forget that abbeys and monastic orders were centers of activity, for production of honey and trade goods, and were inhabited by hundreds or thousands. The place was meant for the living.

****

We spent 19 minutes in the next village, so I can only devote so much to it. Apparently they make dye, ochre, at the village, and the red cliffs are vivid. I myself didn’t take in that much of the town and tried to find a restroom, always a challenge.

****

Avignon, city of popes, was our next stop. I had expected medieval grandeur, but instead, coming into the town, was greeted with modern bulk. Car dealerships and huge chains lined the streets. A McDonald’s and KFC were neighbors. This was not what I expected or wanted—we had a stipend of 25 euros. But these were the suburbs; everything would be better in the center city.

Once in the center city, after we had installed ourselves in our hotel room, we surveyed the city. The central square was promising enough: the restaurants were touristy and not expensive enough (oh, we were going to spend everything and more), but we assumed that the real spots would be just off the center square. Unfortunately, we were confronted by deserted streets and shuttered stores. The only human activity, for a while, that we saw other than ourselves was the sight of two boys kicking a cardboard box amongst one another like a soccer ball, spewing a trail of packing peanuts behind them.

We found a place: L’Endroit. And because I cannot resist an easy pun, we literally found a place: L’Endroit means “The Place” in French. The outside was spare, and the patio empty, but the menu looked good and we were weary from searching.

The interior was warm, and the light fixture threw purple light throughout the room. I had a gaffe. There was a candle set in a candle-holder to my left, on a smaller side table. I was looking at my menu when I smelled smoke. Strange. I looked down and saw the corner of my menu burning. Calm—because I’ve become accustomed to my own idiocy—I cried out “Shit!” and blew out the fire. No damage was done, besides the incinerated corner of the menu. Nevertheless, the food was good—I had stuffed eggplant, rumsteak and “mars” ice cream—and the waitress friendly despite a burnt menu.

****

Walking tour of Avignon. The Pope had a really big palace that should be called a castle. Let me focus on the real event of the day: lunch, or, “The Feast.”

It was advertised as a buffet. This depressed my expectations—the word “buffet” for me is associated with “Old Country Buffet.” There’s nothing wrong with the Old Country Buffet, it’s just that as well as we were eating, the Old Country Buffet is like challenging a Porsche to race with your Mazda.

But a few things showed me I was wrong, before the evident glory of the meal manifested itself. The first was a view of the inner courtyard of the hotel which the restaurant was housed in. It was the courtyard of a cloister: a square with a fountain bubbling in the center. That was nice and elegant. Then I caught a view of the Michelin man with his thumbs up in the window, and I knew that we would be eating well: even a guy like me knows the Michelin Guide is it when it comes to food.

From my perspective, the Michelin Guide is certainly correct. The food was spectacular; it was a feast both in quality and quantity. This restaurant was so luxurious that it had its own house wine (both quite good, so good that I actually preferred the red over the white, which is quite rare) and a variety of meats (salmon, anchovies, lamb, prosciutto), vegetables (tomato-and-mozzarella salad, stuffed tomatoes, eggplant-mariana-parmesan) and desserts (chocolate, and lots of it). The only choice was to admit that gluttony is not a Deadly Sin: the former is true, feasts are deadly, but they are one of those enjoyments that are necessary once and a while, to remind yourself of the artistry that people are capable of. All this was presented without baroque boasting: there was a self-assurance in the restaurant, that it knew what it was doing, and after you finished, you would know that they knew too.

When you eat a feast, as opposed to a meal, your mentality shifts from sustenance—am I eating my fruits and vegetables? Am I eating too much or too little?—to a mentality that is a combination of marathon and hedonist. The latter is obvious: if you’ve paid for the right to eat as much as you possibly can, you will of course attempt to eat as much as you can, with as much pleasure as you can. But we are not bottomless stomachs, even us Americans, despite what the media and foreigners seem to believe. This is the marathon mentality. Pace yourself. Drink water. Vary course size. You become a kind of athlete of enjoying eating. Like any athlete, your body adjusts to the demands of the task your mind has taken on: your stomach is oddly content with each new instance of gluttony, where you eat far more than you possibility could if you were just eating for functional reasons. I’ve gotten severe stomach aches off of less food than I ate at that meal, and yet all I had after this banquet was a weight in my stomach and a torpor—I joked that I’d eaten my food for the season, and now it was time to hibernate for winter.

We imposed penance on ourselves after that feast—Americans, especially of the upper-middle-class college student variety, never let themselves just enjoy themselves—by walking to the Pont of Avignon. The reason we did it was that it was Roman, cool-looking, and there was a song about it. Personally the better aesthetic experience was the food.

We left for the train station after that.

****

I skipped dinner that night.

****

It was supposed to be back to normal today. This is what I assured myself when I went to sleep, for my early-morning class. But first I woke up late. Then, after I left, I discovered that I had put on different shoes. I’ve put on mismatching socks, but never mismatching shoes. Of course I forgot my metro card. And I found, when I came back to the Fondation today, that I’d lost my room key. I don’t know what it was—a return to routine? But attempts to impose a routine occurred during the trip, and I didn’t miss the deadlines—I think. So what was it? One of those days, hopefully, but I hate the vagueness and catch-all nature of that excuse.

****

A news saga that can only be described as American has seized France. This is the divorce saga of the Sarkozys. Cecilia Sarkozy, the former supermodel wife of Nicolas, the President, has requested divorce. The word ‘requested’ is appropriate because the President of France has immunity from all lawsuits, civil or criminal. The President, apparently, has acceded to this request.

What makes this story particularly American is the odd combination of politics, love and sex. Apparently the couple was on the rocks a few years ago, but the Sarkozys agreed to stay together through the campaign, after which Nicolas would waive his immunity.

I’ve never heard of a story like it, and I wonder how it will affect Sarkozy’s position. I would think not at all, considering that not only is Bill Clinton is not only popular in France, but I think his popularity actually increased during and after his impeachment (although this is true of the US as well). But going against this view is an American-style cover of a fashion magazine, Elle, I believe. It features Cecilia Sarkozy staring at the camera with a look that tries to convey the combination of authentic anger and candor with sexiness. The picture actually looks like it’s the result of an interminable photo shoot; I think Cecilia is more angry at the photographer than Nicolas. The caption reads: “Our Exclusive Interview: “I wanted to live without lying.” (Emphasis theirs). This is a particularly American cover for a news media that generally conducts itself with dignity, even in the popular sphere—there are “Philosophy” and “General History” magazines available at newspaper stands, for example. Of course, this is a pretty good story and the sensationalistic aspects would be impossible to avoid. If the story were American, therefore, we’d already be tired of it, and we’re in day 5 or so.

****

The strike continues irregularly. Without warning, all of the drivers of the RER B trains decided to not go past Gare du Nord, cutting off Charles de Gaulle Airport. This was not taken with great enthusiasm. In general, Parisians seem to think the unions will lose and want them to.

****

I’ve become a regular at one patisserie. I was greeted today with “Qu’est-ce que vous souhaitez?” which is far more friendly (Literally translated, it means, “What do you wish for?”) than the normal greeting of “Bonjour” with perhaps a “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” (“What do you want?”) thrown in. And that’s pretty cool.

****

Mondays: not a day for a museum to be closed. And yet there I was in front of the Musee d’Orsay, wondering why it was so empty.

****

I was quickly reminded that I was not on vacation: the internet at the Fondation is up to its normal tricks and work has returned with a vengeance.

Masks and Strikes

Wednesday officially began the period of every Stanford trip abroad known as “Bing Appreciation Period.” In this period, Stanford students enjoy themselves off of the largesse of Helen and Peter Bing. The period officially kicked off with a trip to the Comédie Francaise to see a theatrical interpretation of the Fables of Fontaine.

****

The prelude to the show was a lecture about Fontaine, for the purpose of informing us about the fables of Fontaine. This lecture was a failure. It was a failure of not knowing the audience. What we needed to be acquainted with was the actual content of the fables so that we weren’t adrift when the play began; what we were instead introduced to were meta-level discussions of what Fontaine means to French people, etc.

The lack of relevant information delivered in the lecture set us adrift in the actual performance. Add to that the archaic literary cast to Fontaine’s words and the somewhat lacking acoustics, the show was doomed from the perspective of the written word. All that was left was to appreciate the frame; the painting could only be seen through muddied eyes.

That frame was quite spectacular. The fables, like those of Aesop, featured animal incarnations of human flaws (I think. I would guess my comprehension of the words was around 10%). So the director decided to dress humans in animal masks and have them move in ways that approximated but did not inhabit the animal they acted as. Their masks were spectacular—they resembled the ones from The Lion King.

Similarly, the movements were efficient and minimal, giving the barest suggestions of what animals they were trying to be. Overall, from that perspective it was great. If I could understand the language, I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it. All that was left was to appreciate the technical aspects (which, after my Shakespeare seminar, I felt qualified to do):

First, the scene changes took a very long time. Much longer than in the US or England—the audience would’ve become uncomfortable. But the French audience seemed fine with it and appreciated the play.

Second, there were a number of confusing choices: why did the representation of Fontaine have such a confused, fearful relationship to her characters? She almost seemed regretful for having unleashed them into the world, like some sad Frankenstein’s Monster.

Moving away from the technical to the general, I haven’t felt as much a foreigner in France until I attended this play. Especially for jokes. There would be times in which the audience would give appreciative chuckles or full-out peals of laughter, and I would have no idea what was going on. There were no sight gags to pick up on, and sometimes even the words themselves were no help. The jokes were just something French, and I’m not French. I’m not a part of the club.

****

Today was the strike.

A lot of anticipation for this. From the speculation over who would win, moreover what exactly Sarkozy wanted and what his grand design was, still more over exactly what the strike would entail (would it start at 20h00 and last until 8h00 Friday? Would there be limited service or no?), and, with a melodramatic, almost American twist, would Sarkozy’s impending divorce affect the strike at all?

Like an old-fashioned duel, there was a lot of time spent agreeing on the rules beforehand. Sarkozy started by declaring that there would be minimum service on the Metro, no matter what. The public service union said that it would not strike on Friday, so as not to interfere with the French rugby team’s game tomorrow. And so on, until the actual fight.

It was anticlimactic, at least by my eyes. I expected marches. Overturned cars. Absurd caricatures. Perhaps even a Molotov cocktail or two. And perhaps this happened. But it did not happen in my neck of the woods. Instead the Metro was shuttered, looking like a movie set for a Western. The electronic signs, that typically advise one of the times the trains came, said merely “Pas de Service” or “Traffic très derangé.” (Literally: Traffic very deranged). Occasionally the intercom would speak, its soulless monotone echoing and penetrating the entire empty vessel.

There were no marchers. No picketers. The only protestors defied my expectations of active, loud protestation. They were emergency vehicles. I saw them two separate times and places. They had their lights on, forcing cars to the side. But they traveled at the speed of cop cars on the beat. Behind them trailed frustrated drivers. I’m not sure this was the best ploy for public relations.

The street life of my district seemed unaffected, but was just slightly off. There were fewer walkers and more bikers. Almost no one was in the Parc Montsouris. The taxis were out in force, and were doing good business. This cliché works well: there was something in the air. It was as if everyone collectively came down with a cold and decided to take it easy.

I had work. This was not encouraging. I walked. I walked an hour. This is nothing, really. I walked every day all the day in London. But it’s one thing to walk for fun and enjoyment, quite another to walk out of necessity. Furthermore I didn’t exactly know where I was going. Let me put it this way: Cité Universitaire is a bit out of the way; where work is, is out of out of the way. Work is located in a suburb with the distinctly non-French name of “Malakoff.” The buildings are modern. So it was a long walk.

Coming back from work—I’ll get to the actual experience in a moment—I saw the Tour Montparnasse, that black spire that I’ve ragged on previously. But it makes more sense seen from the south, where it is a part of the newer southern development. Doesn’t mean I like it, but it makes sense.

I had an umambitious dinner. All this because of the strike.

****

By contrast, work was invigorating.

I helped do some research for photos for a documentary, and I’ve become attached (I guess you could say) to a project that the production company is doing on the 2008 elections. Apparently reading blogs does come in handy.

****

We have a French newspaper class every Wednesday. There was an article about stepped-up security in Paris, of a scary variety. The Minister of the Interior want to deploy drones over the banlieus (the poor suburbs) and adopt a London-style system of CCTV and cameras.

This scares me, as always. It’s a maneuver that can justified innocuously—they’re just taking publicly available knowledge that could have been obtained by any cop on the beat, except cheaper and omnipresent.

But it’s that last word that is always a hang-up for me. The omnipresence of cameras in London was always off-putting to me. And there’s always a feeling of unease for me, the same feeling you get when you put your best face on for people you must impress. It’s uncomfortable to be self-conscious in this way. It’s not natural.

Add to that political concerns—this is not some impartial program. Note prominently above the additional commitment of resources to the banlieus. These programs are never impartial because the people enforcing them are not impartial; they have their biases like the rest of us. But as you tilt the scales of power towards one group of people, you will finding that the prejudices of that group to have more gravity, often to the detriment of groups on the outs. I’m not in favor of a program that promises to increase instances of Driving While Black and its equivalents in prejudice.

Perhaps these objections sound like a very minor trade-offs for some, for the possibility of security. I have to admit that it is in some ways comforting to know that someone is always watching. Ultimately, though, the promise of security is to lead to our functioning unaffectedly, not the other way around.

****

We’re going to Provence in the South of France for the weekend. Don’t expect posts until Sunday at the earliest. That’s Bing Appreciation Period for you, and I’m taking advantage.

Sandwiches and Luxury

The French sandwich insists on elegance and simplicity. Where American sandwiches feature a profusion of ingredients (oh, I’ll have a turkey bacon avocado sandwich with brown mustard and lettuce—this sounds all too plausible and delicious), the French sandwich only uses a few simple ingredients, combines them, and c’est tout.

So therefore, my prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella sandwich featured only those two things with bread, with no extraneous ingredients around to possibly sully the star attraction’s taste.

It’s not necessarily a better taste, but it is different and welcome.

****

Versailles is grand: Versailles astounds, Versailles hypnotizes, Versailles overwhelms. Louis XIV got what he paid for in Versailles, the ultimate expression of his myth and his power. It turns out that these things, for the Sun King, were one and the same, as his myth coerced his subjects into following him to ruinous defeat.

Revel writes, revealingly, on page 79 of “The Court”: “No one in 1661 could guarantee that young Louis was the handsomest and most accomplished man in the kingdom, but it was critical that people convinced themselves that he was.” Louis’ greatest asset was his ability to propagate his own myth, for in mythmaking, he won over the public and deceived the nobility. The myth was that Louis was all-wise and all-powerful. Certainly the power-play against Nicolas Fouquet helped his reputation, but it is clear that from the descriptions of court life in Revel’s essay that the nobility ceded the field to Louis and instead chose to frolic in Louis’ place of myth, Versailles.

But the play was not so good, in two senses. In Revel’s discussion of the Duc de Saint-Simon’s memoirs, it is important to note that while the Duc is incredibly cynical about court life, it is a narrow cynicism. It refuses to reimagine the political sphere. This is the first failing of court life—it stifles the body politic. Second, the Duc’s critcism merely deals with the double-dealings, hypocrisy and stultifying nature of court life—so it wasn’t as if the nobles were actually happier. The Duc’s account is confirmed by the revealing quotation later in the work, in which the women admit that they spoke of clothes and fashion strictly to avoid offense. Louis trapped them in his orbit.

Criticism like the Duc’s or the lieu de memoire only served as an aid to Louis. The latter criticism focused on the idea that other courts had been more mannered, more graceful than the present. Of course this abdicates the political to Louis. It makes his only responsibility to the nobles to provide a spicy court life, which he proved adept at.

Versailles itself serves Louis’ mythmaking admirably. The grounds are built chiefly to impress. Hence, their vast size. Hence also the hodgepodge of architectural style present. One can see neoclassical, classical, French classical and baroque architectural styles sharing the same space, to disastrous results. Versailles refuses elegance in favor of opulence. The gardens are practically the only elegant feature of Versailles. The rest is kitsch, which is otherwise so rare in France. The comparisons to Greek gods and then the self-comparisons only fit in with the atmosphere of kitsch.

The actual saga of building it underlies the actual visual impressiveness of the grounds (for however visually overcrowded it is, one must admit the mass is wondrous). That Louis XIV deposed a powerful noble in order to build it is one part of the story; that he took undesirable grounds and made them desirable still another. The story is myth, and that myth served to convince onlookers that Louis XIV was “L’Etat.”

The consequences of the myth were narcissism: “Versailles contemplated and admired Versailles.” (Pommier) This narcissism meant ignoring the great problems of the day, for while only a powerful country could build something as vast as Versailles, the poverty and external enemies of France meant it was dangerous to watch oneself too much.

In all this, Louis XIV’s gargantuan opulence myth reminds me of our own country. Looking at the luxuries we buy for ourselves, the $10 million parties our plutocrats throw for themselves, the “Mission Accomplished” banners our politicians hang, I can’t help but detect an air of self-congratulation reminiscent of Versailles in Louis’ time.

The dangers of this self-congratulation are an obsessive focus on the details we should be congratulating ourselves on. Take these two incidents from Revel’s “The Court”. The first, quotation, about Madame de Sévigné, “She kept informed about the goings-on there [in Versailles], but still felt ill-educated.” The second, that interminable passage of a letter, obsessing over the writer’s sons, who were “princes of the blood” and therefore got to be addressed as such-and-such instead of such-and-such. Versailles served as focus for the nation’s wealthy, for its attention and its status. That focus served Louis XIV’s short-term goals, at the cost to his nation.

The echoes of our culture are too strong. Celebrity culture is the analogue of the first; the obsession over the “right schools” and other conspicuous consumptions the second. For us, the focus is wealth and the hedonistic life that follows from it. Both the life of nobility of Louis’ day and the life of wealth of ours are tokenist, materialist conceptions of the good life that distract at the expense of community welfare (not to mention the expense of one’s own happiness). It got the French in to trouble; hopefully we can pry ourselves away from our distractions to avoid our troubles.

****

Apparently, according to my possibly faulty translation of Le Monde Dimplomatique, Sarkozy wants to move towards a more American-style health system. Well that’s suspicious. It’d be one thing if he were the guy trying to do some belt-tightening, but moving to an American health care system is like taking up bulimia as an alternative.

****
The ride to Versailles shows that modern side of Paris. Here are the gleaming glass buildings! Here are the cranes! And yet, intermixed with that are small square French houses, so that you’re reminded that you cannot quite leave.

This is welcome. Something awful about most modern glass titans is how indistinguishable they are. If you took some from France, some from London and some from New York and switched them, I doubt anyone would notice but the occupants. Some are distinctive, true, like the egg-shaped building sitting near the Thames, but in general, they are all too interchangeable.

Not being an expert on the subject of urban architecture, I wonder why this is? If I were forced to guess, I would attribute it to globalization and the rise of the international superstar architect, an I.M. Pei or Lehry. They all have specific visions, and that’s all well and good, but their visions do not seem to be distinctive to the specific city. Insofar as we see a city as something other than a commercial and residential hub, this is a problem.

That something other is a distinctive way of life, a spirit that is represented by its buildings that can be called a work of art. My memories of London architecture are the stately white columns and crescents of residential London. When I leave Paris, I will remember the French Classicism, the grand boulevards and the mastery of perspective. These things are unique, are spiritual. Those modern glass hulks, while occasionally beautiful, share more with themselves than with the city they inhabit.

****

I’ve become a regular at the neighborhood patisseries. The proprietors are now trying to guess my orders. It is my duty to outwit them.

****

Modern Versailles is the Tower of Babel built anew. I heard German, Italian, French, English, Asian languages, a whole hue and gibbering cry. I heard the din while I trudged along with them, as Versailles herds the masses along in a preordained route. Like the King that built it, Versailles very much insists on routine.

****

Do I look trustworthy or something? People have been asking for my directions and advice a lot.

****

So I saw someone wearing a St. Louis Rams Kurt Warner jersey. I got into a disagreement about whether this was a French or American person. The arguments for both sides are strong: on one hand, it’s a pretty random jersey for a French person to wear (they do wear American athletic apparel, but it is of a more current vintage), on the other, no American would wear a St. Louis Rams Kurt Warner jersey, seeing as it’s not old enough to be retro, nor is it new enough to be current (Kurt Warner doesn’t play for them anymore.) It’s a mystery.