Category: barf

This is how we do it in America

So I guess it all started yesterday morning, when I awoke to an e-mail from my dear friend J, who sadly left Paris last week to return to Southern California.  The e-mail announced that she and her longtime boyfriend BC (who is still here in Paris for a few more weeks) got engaged last week an hour or so before her plane took off. I couldn’t be more delighted about this news, as I can’t really imagine a more awesome couple than this one. They wanted to keep the news on the down low until they informed everyone in their (large) families, so BC has been pokerfaced all week during numerous hangouts. I decided that a celebration was in order, so I enlisted the help of B and S.  S is staying with me for a few days before he too leaves Paris for the States, so there is a definite end-times vibe in the air. We decided that there was no better celebratory meal for a bunch of expats in the Paris than a huge Tex-Mex feast. B’s visiting friends from Indiana recently brought him a suitcase full of Old El Paso delights, including pickled jalapeños and escabèche, dubious-looking “mild taco” and “cheesy burrito” seasoning packets, and mysteriously shelf-stable flour tortillas. These, coupled with a bottle of Tapatio that S had from birthday care package from the States and a few Haas avocados that surfaced at my local vegetable market last week, formed the basis of our fajita blowout.

It’s a trick to make anything Mexican in France, as this country wholly eschews spicy food. S and I went to three or four different markets yesterday in an attempt to purchase something vaguely resembling a fresh jalapeño or serrano or even poblano chile. We ended up with the equivalent of bell peppers shaped like poblanos, the appeal of which is completely lost on me.   We improvised, and I concocted a pretty killer (if I do say so myself) steak marinade by food processing together some garlic cloves, cilantro, Bermuda onions, lime juice, “mild taco” seasoning, smuggled-in chile powder, and olive oil.  We got most of the heat in our pico de gallo and guacamole from the aforementioned can of pickled jalapeños and escabèche that was hand-carried to us from South Bend, Indiana. France appears to be the place where avocados come to die, but the ones I picked up last week were pretty decently textured, if totally bland. I coaxed a mediocre guacamole to life, using copious amounts of lime juice, cilantro, and a spoonful of Maille mayonnaise. The mayo is trick my mother taught me. In a pinch, it gives your guacamole that fatty taste that good avocados have when, well, you don’t have good avocados. It sounds gross, but it works. S whipped up a gallon or so of pico de gallo, which he kicked into action with the vinegar from the canned jalapeños. Finally, we found some Colby cheese masquerading as “imported Cheddar” at Monoprix.

The result:

As it was a celebration, we kicked off the evening with a shots of tequila and a bottle of champagne, followed by two carafes full of my splendid homemade margaritas (equal parts lime juice, Cointreau, and tequila, with simple syrup to taste). You can see B pouring the first round from what looks like a bottle of Muscadet. At this point in the evening, we were actually reusing glassware! Organic champagne and recycling! How far we had to fall!

In case you didn’t get the memo, smoking kills:

Frying up those huge plates of peppers, onions, and steak was no small feat in my miniature kitchen on my glorified hot plates. By the time I was finished the entire apartment was filled with smoke and the floors were slicked down with grease. Thank goodness smoke detectors are something that only paranoid Americans have. The dinner was a wild success, if somewhat a disappointment as the guys seemed way more amped to about talk about the World Cup (go Côte d’Ivoire!) than the wedding. I wished that J was here to celebrate with us so that she and I could have geeked out on the romantic stuff. Oh well. She was missed.

I don’t know whether to attribute the events that followed to the two six packs of beer we somehow consumed, or the rather toxic (if strangely delicious!) French tequila we were drinking. It might also have been the two dusty Desperados (tequila-flavored beer!) that our British friends had brought to a party a few months back that I inexplicably decided to drink. All I know is that by 10 p.m. or so I was out for the count and had crawled into bed to pass out. I vaguely remember that the boys were going down to the river to finish off another round of margaritas (classy!). I also recall B patting my head saying in a soothing voice that he would take care of cleaning up the mess.

At two a.m. I awoke to the feeling that my brain was caving in on itself. Finding myself alone in the apartment, I surveyed the damage. Every single surface of my apartment seemed to be coated in congealed grease. Somehow the bowl of pico de gallo had been upended and there were chunks of tomato and vinegary juice covering the table and dripping onto the floor. As I stared dismayed at the carnage, S and B stumbled in. That they even made it back to my apartment was a miracle, as neither of them could enunciate or even walk very well. I quickly realized that they were going to be no help and sent them to bed. I was now decidedly in the hangover phase of my evening, so I pushed up my sleeves and got to work cleaning.

Around this time it became clear that B wasn’t kidding when he said the tequila really doesn’t agree with him. He ran into the kitchen needing to barf, but S was in the bathroom attempting to drunkenly extricate his contact lenses from his eyes. I yelled at S to get the hell out of the bathroom and passed B the trashcan, which he eschewed for some reason much to my bewilderment. He somehow made it to the toilet that time, but wasn’t quite as lucky in one of his six or seven subsequent trips, as I discovered when I slipped and nearly fell on a puddle of vomit in my living room. S wandered into the kitchen and carefully washed a single spoon, sighing with the sheer magnitude of his effort as he placed it on the dishrack and declaring that he felt dizzy. Realizing he was worthless in this state, I shooed him out of the kitchen and back to bed. I cleaned for an hour or so, breaking two wine glasses in the process. After I finally managed to mop up all the grease, pico de gallo, barf, and glass shards, I placed Advil and glasses of water near their S and B’s heads, and fell asleep muttering about how somebody better be buying me brunch tomorrow.

The three of us awoke midmorning with terrible hangovers and a lingering concern about what had happened to our friend BC along the way. S and B gradually pieced together the Seine portion of the evening. S said that he knew B was in trouble when eight or nine of his comments began with “Well, you know, where I’m from in Indiana…” followed by a total conversational non sequitur. Apparently the guys had decided it was appropriate to bring glassware down to the banks of river to drink their margaritas, some of which ended up broken and tossed in the Seine for emphasis. Let’s just say it wasn’t a banner night for Americans in Paris.

In light of this, we decided to do as hungover Americans do and get a big, greasy breakfast, paid for by the guy who barfed on the floor. None of us had yet been to the much-hyped Breakfast in America, which leads us to the following installment of Clarence in Paris.

Breakfast in America is a rather gimmicky establishment that was founded by some dude from Connecticut who missed proper American breakfasts when he moved to Paris to become a screenwriter. They’ve expanded the whole concept and the two branches of BIA (puke) are more or less simulacra of a generic American diners, complete with bottomless cups of drip coffee, Elvis on the stereo, and red Naugahyde booths.  In addition to a variety of Denny’s-style breakfast offerings available throughout the day, they also have a wide selection of sandwiches and burgers in the afternoons.

All that said, I resolved early on in this whole blarg experiment that I would only write reviews of restaurants I actually like and could say nice things about. I find myself conflicted as I don’t have too many nice things to say about Breakfast in America. The burgers were overcooked and tasteless, the bacon was limp, the pancakes were cold, and the coffee was sour and totally toxic (I suspect that this is their way of cutting back on the demand for refills). What kind of American diner doesn’t serve ice in their Coke? What kind of American diner doesn’t stock Tabasco? What kind of American diner doesn’t have air conditioning? Look, I’m all about a restaurant built around a stupid shtick (in fact, I’m cultivating a pretty serious fantasy about opening the first build-your-own burrito joint in Paris). There was just so much wrong with this place and I can’t imagine why it is so popular both with Parisians and Americans living abroad. If I ever find myself in this unfortunate condition again in the future, I plan to skip BIA and get a decent burger or omelet at any of the neighboring French restaurants.

Details:  If you find yourself wildly hungover in Paris and think that Breakfast in America might just be the stomach-coating ticket, well, you’re wrong.  Avoid it.

Chaos reigns!

Today I’m wearing the same dress as the one Charlotte Gainsbourg wears during a dream sequence in Antichrist. I bought it a year before I saw the film, but regrettably I can’t think of it now as anything other than “the clitorectomy dress.”

Underwater

So, um, yeah, I guess I kinda went MIA there for a little while.  I went to Berlin, which was delicious, and I want to tell you all about it.  I was staying with my lovely friends and their three year old, so most of my time was spent shooting the shit with them (which we can do copiously), drinking beer, eating yummy things, and chasing the kid around with glee.  When it came time to sit down at the old blargh in the evenings, I instead collapsed and dreamed of wooden trains and wurst. I came back to Paris on Sunday, so I don’t really have a good excuse for not posting until now. Well, there were those several huge piles of midterms that I needed to grade.  There is also something else, but I’m worried that if I blog about it, I will sound verifiably nuts.

I think I’m allergic to my apartment.

Or maybe Paris.

Or maybe I’m just allergic to not being in Berlin.

Either way, I’ve been congested since I my first lungful of French air. Last night, all the snot climaxed into this bizarre thing where it felt like my ear was filled with the kind of pressure you get on the plane or underwater or when driving up to my mom’s house in Colorado, except it was a thousand times worse. I’m such a hypochrondriac that I began imagining all kinds of crazy scenarios, including early-onset deafness or black mold growing somewhere in my apartment. I even entertained the idea that an earwig had crawled into my ear canal and taken up residency. Isn’t that why they are CALLED earwigs in the first place? An hour or so on WedMD confirmed my worst suspicions, and I called B crying and spluttering that I was going deaf and if I wasn’t going deaf I was surely going mad. To his credit, he came over and watched me writhe around like a jackass for a few hours, never once remarking that I was being kind of a huge baby about some ear pressure. I think he even at one point promised to learn to sign if I was indeed going deaf. A swell guy if I’ve ever met one. My ear finally popped, slowly and pathetically, and I collapsed from all of the self-induced stress.

I still feel woozy and my ear still feels like I’m scuba diving.  I’ll get to some restaurant reviews soon, and I’m really sorry to those people (Hi Mom and Dad!  Hi M!  Hi Londoner!) who come here everyday hoping for a post.  Right after I chew this pack of gum and yawn for a couple of hours, I’m on it.

If you want something sumptuous to read (I’d say “in the meantime,” but let’s be honest, nothing I’m going to tell you about currywurst would deserve that adjective), I would you suggest you visit my friend Brandon’s new food blog Terre et Mer.  The world of foodies can be broken into two camps:  fat kids and gastronomes.  I think it is pretty clear on which side of that fence I fall.  Brandon, on the other hand, is of the latter persuasion, and when he isn’t watching Agnès Varda films, collecting rare Armagnacs, writing about Proust, or learning his ninth foreign language, he is probably eating something so rarified and delicious that the rest of us plebs can only dream about it.  He’s also sharp, funny, and appears to have some serious chops for this oh so lofty blarging genre. Check him out.

Until soon, my patient, dearest reader. My jeans are tight from all the research I did for you. You’re welcome.

You know it’s true love when…

I recently fell down the rabbit hole that I will call (for lack of a better word) home-extraction porn on Youtube.  By this, I mean the entire genre of Youtube videos that have sprung up around pimple-popping, cyst-extraction, and boil-lancing, with what I would call subgenres for eyelid pore inflammation and cauliflower ear.  When I first read about this phenomenon on Jezebel in 2008, the genre was just getting off the ground and the videos were still somewhat tame.  Beware, however, clicking any of the videos on the Jezebel link or googling “pimple popping” on Youtube is not for the faint of heart.  If the internets can teach us anything, it is that no matter how gross your ailment may seem, there is someone out there whose situation is even grosser.

Like any film genre, there are certain conventions now in place in extraction porn.  First, we usually begin with a shirtless young guy with a humongous pimple/cyst/boil on his back or chest.  Bonus points if he continues to wear a baseball cap despite being shirtless.  A woman, probably a girlfriend or wife, usually does the extraction, though we rarely see the face of the person doing the squeezing.  There are varying degrees of hygiene involved in these proceedings, though people aren’t usually sensible enough to disinfect their tools.  Some of the women wear gloves, though I amusingly noticed that one extractor appeared to be using dish-washing gloves she pulled directly from the sink.  The hygiene measures that are taken are usually less about the threat of infection and more about not getting pus on the person doing the squeezing.  (A brief caveat, all of the medical sites I visited advised infections resulting from home cyst and boil extraction and draining are not to be taken lightly and that you really ought to see a doctor for this sort of thing.  In fact, I think all the evidence we need in favor of socialized health care can come from a single Youtube search of “giant cyst.”)  As the cysts have gotten larger in the genre, people have now begun using Exacto-knives, most of which do not appear to be disinfected.  I think that this actually technically qualifies as surgery (bodily incision with instruments).  There is the initial gasp from the squeezer and video-camera holder when pus begins to ooze out of the pimple/cyst/boil, followed by the scream when something pops out with some momentum behind it.  Ironically, while many people in these videos are talking about the genre as a whole (“We love these videos!” “We decided to make this video because of the World’s Biggest Pimple video that went viral last year!” etc.), every single one seems to be genuinely shocked about two inevitable events:  1) that pus occasionally spurts out with a great deal of force and an uncertain trajectory and 2) that this kind of thing smells bad, I mean, really bad.  I would say that the final genre conventions include statements of incredulity that the human body can produce such monstrosity (“I can’t believe how far that one shot!” “What if we are just pulling all the fat and tissue out of his back?”  “I don’t think fat smells like this!” “What if it stretches all the way to my leg?” and my personal favorite, “Oh my god, I think it has a brain!”) and the sound of gagging in the background.  As far as I know, nobody actually pukes in these videos, but the smell is indeed terrible enough to make wretching noises a requisite part of the proceedings.

Tracie Egan of Jezebel rightly points out that there was a definite gender component to these videos, namely that it is usually a woman doing the extraction on the body of her boyfriend.  While the genre has expanded exponentially and now there are a variety of kinship structures represented in this strange ritual—including families and bachelor parties—it does seem that cohabitating heterosexual couples film the majority of these videos.  It seems that lancing your lover’s boil and posting a video of it on the internet is a way of demonstrating not only your commitment, but also your love and intimacy with another person.

Lest you try and write this off as a fringe phenomenon, many of these videos have view-counts in the hundreds of thousands.  Lots of people are making these videos, and even more people are watching them (yours truly included).  While most of them are just flat-out gross, I did find myself intrigued by the relationships that lead to this kind of bodily intimacy.  I’ve only reached the pimple-popping level with a few boyfriends and I largely regret it – I think that maintaining a certain level of physical mystery in one’s relationships can go a long way in prolonging desire.  But I’m single, and many of my happily partnered and married friends go at each other like gorillas:  picking, squeezing, and even lancing their partner with great love and attention. And as now a mild connoisseur of home-extraction porn, I’ll say that there is nothing sadder than the guy filming himself lancing his own boil, alone.  The camera angle is always off, the sound is never quite right, and you can’t help but wish that the poor guy had some pus-crazy girlfriend to help him out.  God help him if the thing is on his back.  There are certain things one shouldn’t be alone for and the mother of all back-cysts certainly is one of them.

David Sedaris has a lovely piece about his partner Hugh in this capacity that ends with a boil-lancing that is downright tender.  It’s definitely worth a read, and a much better articulation of this kind of bizarre kind of physical intimacy than sifting through a million Youtube videos might yield you.  But if you are still interested in the Youtube videos and could care less about the shades of deep intersubjective rapport signaled by all this pus, then I suggest you start with the search “biggest pimple in the world.”  You’re welcome.

It’s not telepathy, kiddo, it’s a series of tubes we call “The Internet”

SO SOME PEOPLE DECIDED NOT TO QUIT SMOKING TODAY. SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY DECIDED TO BUY A WHOLE NEW PACKAGE OF TOBACCO THIS MORNING, MAKING THEIR PROMISES TO “QUIT SOON” SEEM ESPECIALLY FLIMSY. AMONG THESE PEOPLE IS AN INDIVIDUAL WHO EXPRESSED SOLIDARITY WITH MY KICK-ASS DETOX PLAN BUT NEVERTHELESS ALLOWED ME TO CONTINUE TAKING SUGAR CUBE AFTER SUGAR CUBE AFTER SUGAR CUBE DURING OUR TEATIME. A TEATIME THAT HAPPENED TO TAKE PLACE AT ONE OF THE BEST PLACES EVER FOR FALLING OFF THE NO-CARB WAGON AND ROLLING AROUND IN SOME REFINED SUGAR AND BUTTER WITH YOUR EYES GLAZED OVER AND TONGUE LOLLING IN UNADULTERATED JOY.

LET’S JUST SAY I KNOW WHO I’M NOT GOING TO ASK FOR HELP WHEN I NEED TO KICK MY METH HABIT.

God, that’s annoying. No way I can possibly keep it up, even for spite. I don’t know how Kanye can live with himself. Oh wait, yes I do. Who needs lowercase letters when you have piles and piles of cash to roll around in? Suckers, that’s who.

* * *

Photo courtesy of the matchless M. Starik, who better get her butt back to Paris pronto.  We’re getting into all kinds of trouble without her calm Soviet wisdom to guide us.