So little known fact about me. Back when I used to be a skinny aspiring anorexic, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I love fashion still, but the silliness some designers use to make their mark just blows me away.
So from the City Magazine Paris comes the following must have Printemps (Spring) Styles
For example- bright yellow Hammer pants. Yep- you can’t touch these.
Now I know these are shown with the hip (cough) gladiator sandals (do you remember wearing these last time around? Do you remember that all those extra straps mean dozens of new fun places to get blisters?) but I think they might go better with these:
No, those aren’t baby booties. They are powder blue moccasins for grown up girls (ew). Now let me say hurray for shoes that won’t sprain your ankle (unlike the heel-less heels that were fall’s folly) but these have to be some of the ugliest shoes ever made.
So now that we’ve got your bottom covered, let’s talk about your top. Specifically, make-up. I bet you didn’t even know there was such a thing as “sexy clown” style. But if that much color is not your thing, try this:
It’s a little bit Hitler, a little bit Robert Palmer, and definitely affordable as all you will need is one oversized black kohl eyeliner.
Now on to something serious. I am all about the one giant piece of gawdy costume jewlery trend and have been looking for a suitable ring for months. I found this darling piece of bling at the St. Ouen flea market (where we were discouraged from going because the brown people there would rob us blind- I shit you not) This baby cost me all of 6 euros and I totally would have haggled it down but Ruth wimped out on me.
When I started the little “I am Hillary Clinton” meme, I set up a google alert so that when other people did it I could keep track of them and add them to the list.
Over the last few weeks I have gotten a hundred or more alert emails for the phrase “I am Hillary Clinton”. I did not remember how common the words I and am are (silly, I know) so ALL of those alerts were for things other than my little meme.
And every single one of them was negative. Every one.
I would like to point out that my own state has the most dramatic increase at 25 percent. Sweet. Couple that with the rising numbers of people living in poverty and all I can say is:
Thanks Georgie!
And BTW, the thrifty food plan and freezing of the standard deduction are really lovely ways of sticking it to the poor. I am pretty sure that we could take a wee tiny bit out of your dickswinging military budget to make sure that all those poor people can get enough to eat without also risking homelessness.
Or the French version brought on by being bitten by a Boeing 777 has wracked my body the last few days. 16 hours of sleep a day, and I could do more but I did have to come to work today.
I perhaps don’t have it in me to be too angry/ranty today- so like the song says- tell me something good. Are you desperate for season 4 of BSG to start while simultaneously sad that it is the end of the series (I am). Are you desperate for a spring that never comes? Do you wish you could find truly good store bought beef broth so you could make awesome French onion soup without spending days roasting bones? Did you just rediscover that henley shirts make your rack look fab in a totally not trying way? Cause I’m doing all those things and i want a cookie.
Entertain me peeps. If i can get my camera to work I will have funny commentary on french fashion magazines tomorrow (hint- clown make-up is sooooooo in for spring, I shit you not)
You peeps are going to have to bear (or bare- I can never remember) with me for a bit. I am still processing a week’s worth o’ stupid and you may be getting snippets of conversations for the next few days.
George: What’s funny is that the Mormons don’t practice overt sexism
Me: Let’s see, a woman can’t get into heaven unless her husband dies first, I think that’s pretty overt.
George: I’m not talking about religion, I’m talking about their lives. You see all these successful, professional Mormon men, but never women
Me: Cause keeping the ladies at home, pregnant and with no income of their own isn’t overt sexism? Besides, how is that different from any of the Christian religions that want wives to be submissive?
George: You can’t compare two religions, nobody does that. If you did it would be way too complicated.
Me: Actually there is a whole line of academics devoted to comparing religions. It’s called Comparative Religion of all things.
So I have learned a VALUABLE lesson- do not go on a week long trip with someone you don’t know very very well. George (previously known as hot doctor, now know as BIGGEST ASS IN THE WORLD) has got to be the worst kind of American tourist ever.
It started as soon as we met in the airport. He started loudly proclaiming that the French should be catering to his every need because we liberated their ass in two world wars. Funny thing is, George is only recently an American. While my grandparents actually did storm the beaches of Normandy and help liberate the French from the Germans, none of George’s ancestors have ever fought in an American war. He was not terribly pleased when I pointed this out to him. Later, when he was trying to get “frisky” and I wasn’t in the mood, he was PISSED that I wasn’t going to roll over and spread my legs for him. When I said that acting like an ugly American tourist was a giant turn off, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t get that he was just kidding.
So the next day I tried to be nice and he “tried” to be nice. But he turned all his pent up ugly American behavior on me instead of on the French and proceeded to argue with Every. Single. Thing.I. Said. I stopped being nice when George woke me up from a dead sleep because he couldn’t figure out how to turn off the bathroom light.
Bernard and Ruth had both decided to keep in check their jokes about how med school would be easier than being mathematicians and Bernard has mad jedi skills at diverting George when it became obvious that his behavior was going to cause me to stab him in the eye. By Tuesday, I stayed home and slept while they went to the Eiffel tower. By Wednesday, George’s bitching about wanting a cheeseburger and only drinking diet cokes was making me nauseas. As was his screaming at lovely French waiters in English and interrupting Ruth when she talked to them in French.
I became openly hostile. He deserved it. While watching a French fireman work, George thought it was appropriate to scream at him in English “Success! Success!”. The look the firefighter gave George was priceless. It said “Some of us have real jobs you asshole frat boy”.
By Thursday, after having George the wonder ass disparage everything I said without having any sort of well rounded knowledge in anything, I took to treating him like an imbecile. At Versailles he made the genius discovery that there was “a lot of Roman influence” to which I replied “yeah- it’s a whole art movement called Neo-classical, you dumb ass”. He then decided to be bitchy because he wanted a cheeseburger. In France.
George had to leave early (thank god) because he said he had a patient having problems back home. True or not, he still was there about 6 days longer than I could tolerate.
I think I know what was wrong with him though. I think he has the citizen equivalent of “New Money” syndrome. The newly rich go through great pains to show off their wealth and importance as a way to prove that they have arrived. Old Money doesn’t have anything to prove. I think as a new citizen, George may feel the need to prove his American-ness by being every ugly stereotype of us there is: arrogant, loud, rude, aggressive, ignorant, uncouth, un-read, incurious and abusive.
That doesn’t excuse his behavior, and he is still the only person I have ever felt I really had to restrain myself from stabbing through the eyes. The great thing is that Paris was awesome in spite of George, particularly Friday when we had a lazy frittata breakfast and much informed rambley discussion about life and politics and everything before heading off to the Pompidou where I got to play art historian for Ruth and Bernard. To contrast the behaviors, Bernard who likes art but doesn’t know much about it asked me about who “that guy that makes the big square paintings is”. At first I thought he meant Mondrian, but then I figured out he meant Rothko. We searched the museum so I could find him the 2 Rothko’s they have and I explained how you can tell when a Rothko painting was done by looking at it because they get darker and sadder later in his life, right up until he committed suicide. I also got toe explain the industrial scariness of Leger and how it was very timely with two world wars and the industrial revolution and how Picasso was not the inventor of nor the only person to do cubist figures. I showed him Braque and Gris and Klee and the distorted figures of Modigliani and we all marveled at Niki de St. Phalle’s The Bride.
Despite speaking no French and having no art background, Bernard was easily able to deal with the French politely and show a sincere curiosity and humility. George did neither. I am not the most humble of people, but I do think think that travel requires you to act like a guest in someone else’s home. Tread lightly, be polite and don’t demand respect without giving any.
I have just returned from a trip to your lovely country. As will come to no surprise to anyone with a pulse, the food, the wine, the art, the bread and the cafes were all lovely and awe inspiring. But being that I am an American (who was traveling with a couple other Americans) we thought it would be in your best interest to fill out this little comment card about France so that you may improve your customer service skills.
1) Please soften all French tap water. It is the hardest water in the world, I am sure. I think France has the best beauty products because without gallons of lotion and creams, French women would molt out of their skin because of the hardness of the water. After just a few days of drinking the water, my friend Ruth and I were both oddly bloated and dehydrated all at the same time. Actually, I reacted so badly to the water that my feet and ankles are still swollen to an unusual size. Which brings us to…
2) Please please please get Volvic to import their flavored, fake-sugar free waters to America. What a brilliant idea to flavor water with fruit juice and 2 whole grams of sugar (about 8 calories for the calorie freaks out there- less than a handful of tic tacs)instead of a shit load of cancer causing brain rotting sucralose. I discovered the lemon flavor one last time I was in France, but this time I will be having dreams about pammplemousse (grapefruit) water forever.
3) Cobblestones dude- what is up with the fucking cobblestones? I get them in the old places like Versailles, but you cobblestoned the entire outside of the Pompidou. WTF? Cobblestones hurt, they twist ankles, they make me cry. Please replace all cobblestones with sensible concrete, or maybe bouncy rubber sidewalks.
4) The Metro- WANT! Can you loan your metro system to my fair city for just a week? Pretty please? Friday night we were completely across town in the Bastille area having dinner when it was getting close to metro shut down time (12:30pm). At 12:11 we caught the first train we needed to get back to our apartment in the north end of the 18th. 5 minutes later we got off at the Champs Elysees and caught the next train up to Guy Moquet. We were home before 12:30, including the kilometer walk back to our apartment from the metro stop. In Seattle, I would still have been waiting for the 48 at 12:30 (the 48 is always late is almost a nursery rhyme for bus riders here)
5) Dude, we need to discuss the goat cheese funk. I love goat cheese, don’t get me wrong. But goat has a very particular rank ass stink to it. It permeates the grocery stores and cold storage boxes at the farmers markets. A goat brie stank up our kitchen until we figured out it was not something that had gone off, but the natural eau de goat from the cheese. Marie Antoinette had her animals perfumed, I would think you could find a way to eliminate goat funk from cheese.
6) Versailles started off as a home for the elite. Now it is packed full of screaming children (and a better advertisement for birth control than even this commercial
Please either muzzle the children or have child free days at the palace. I am quite sure none of the Louis had gangs of screaming middle schoolers roaming the the grounds. Send them to Euro Disney instead.
7) Speaking of Versailles, it is HUGE. I don’t think it would ruin the aesthetics to install moving sidewalks like they have at the airports.
8)Charles De Gaul is the most evil airport in history. Most airports have signs telling you where certain airlines check in desks are. CDG has four giant terminals and not a sign in sight. I am pretty sure that I hiked about 15 miles with a heavy backpack from the train stop to the Continental desk today, all because there was no way to know where the hell i was going without walking for days.
9) Your idea to have French schoolchildren each adopt the history of one Jewish French child killed in WWII is brilliant. Don’t let the haters stop that.
10) The Pompidou makes my heart happy. Can I please have a tiny closet to live in on either the 4th or 5th floors. I will happily give art history lessons to hapless American tourists in exchange for a sleeping closet. Pretty please, with sugar? On just those 2 floors I saw works of art by at least 10 and more like 15 of my favorite artists of all time.
I am sure that if you take these few minor requests into consideration, Paris will be the most awesome travel spot in the world. Thank you for your hospitality and attention to these matters.
For the most part, our adventures in Paris have been very pleasant. We are in a residential neighborhood far from most of the tourist places and the shopkeepers and waiters have been kind and patient.
But tonight we went to the Pigalle neighborhood, or red light district. I was a bit put off at first, as the only women we saw were “hostesses”( who just looked sad and desperate, I wanted to pay their rent and feed their kids), but we had a blast at the erotic bookstore and then settled into the patio of a brasserrie and drank a hit load of wine. The area was lousy with drunk Brits. There was even a broken bottle fight. But eventually the bar we were at emptied of all the tourists but us. Next to us was a table full of drunk french men.
Ruth, being the awesome phenom that she is, is fluent in french and totally understood when the french drunks started talking shit about us. She asked them if they had a problem, but that didn’t shut them up. I could feel the cockswagger vibe coming off them, I think any women in the world understands the universal language of asshole misogynists. But it wasn’t until we got back to our apartment that Ruth felt comfortable telling me exactly what they were saying.
“For the right amount of money, we could fuck them both”
Now had I known that was the gist of their conversation, I would have pulled the ugly American card. I am seething right now because I didn’t get to say what I would have said to them in English. “Really, how much have you got? Oh I’m sorry, you don’t have enough for me to fuck such a small dick”
On the other hand, all of the North African immigrants we have met have been exceptionally kind and respectful. Next time some dickwad wants to go on and on about how much more sexually liberated Europe is than the rest of the world, I am going to remember the fucking french men and then punch someone in the face. The next time someone declares that all muslims are sexists, I’m going to do the same thing. Misogyny is everywhere and kindness often only comes from people with little power.
