Category: social skills
La Chasse
A few weeks ago I walked in on B looking at something very intently on my computer. Beads of sweat had formed on his brow. He looked up at me guiltily and I discovered that he is interested in a very peculiar type of website:
Mushroom porn.
Or more precisely, morel mushroom porn. See, B grew up hunting morels in the forests of Indiana. Apparently, there are all sorts of backwoodsy folks in the US who do this sort of thing, and some of them reap the benefits fit for a king.
I joked that B had far too many teeth and far too little camouflage to consider these people his brethren. This apparently hit a nerve and he was explained to me in no uncertain terms that morel hunting, like lung cancer, is a proud part of his Hoosier upbringing. Over the past month or so, he has become increasingly obsessed with the forests surrounding Paris, weather and soil conditions, French morel hunting message boards, and where the morels originate that have been arriving at the Marché des Enfants Rouges (answer: Turkey). He’s developed what I’ve begun calling “the manic morel face,” a combination of childlike Christmas morning excitement grin with the deranged eyes of a pedophile.
So yesterday, some of us went out to Fontainebleau with the idea of hunting for morels. We packed quite an epic picnic. I did my part by spending a small fortune at the cheese counter at La Grande Epicerie, a decision that made me the most fragrant participant in la chasse. Long story short, we didn’t have any luck finding morels, but we did have a lovely afternoon drinking rosé, sunbathing, and exploring a beautiful forest. We also saw this:
Yes, that’s a swan nesting in front of the chateau. M snuck onto the grass to capture this shot, only to have a small band of authoritarian children gather at the edge of the trail and hiss “Pelouse interdite!” (“Grass is forbidden!”). Their terrifyingly early internalization of the Law was hysterical, and we spent the rest of the day joking about p’tits collabos. A great day all in all, though I wish I’d snuck a basket of morels in my bag to hide under trees for B. I’m sure that a seasoned morel hunter like him wouldn’t have been fooled for a second, but it might have taken the edge of the disappointment that overtook his face as the day progressed. I’ve been informed, however, that la chasse has only just begun. As Clarence is a big fan of a morel cream sauce on his filet mignon, I suspect that there are a few trips to Fontainbleau in my near future.
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.
“Homeless” is probably a bit of an overstatement
As of tomorrow, I’ll be homeless for a week. This isn’t a very big deal, though I’ve done a remarkably large amount of grumbling about it. My landlady and I agreed when I took my apartment that I would vacate it for one week in the summer so that she could stay here during a conference. Somehow “summer” turned into “the middle of the spring semester,” but at any rate, I agreed to this arrangement a while ago and now have to shut up and vacate the premises. File this under “one of the many consequences of having nothing in writing.” Rental contracts are totally bourgeois, man.
I’m still debating whether or not to show her the little trick for making the hot water in the shower work. Right now I’m fifty-fifty on whether or not I let her suffer through icy cold showers for a week. You know, as a simulation of what the first two and a half months of my stay in Paris were like. A little taste, you might say. Let’s see if she isn’t grumbling like a high-maintenance American after a few days.
The good news is that I’ve decided to take advantage of both my temporary eviction and my enviable “work week” to go on a trip to Berlin. I’ll be staying with three of my favorite people in the world and visiting some old haunts (as I’m sure you suspected, most of my “haunts” involve eating delicious things.) After a few months in Berlin two years ago, I swore that I would never need to eat German food again. Ha! I’m already dreaming about all of the leberwurst, blutwurst, currywurst (I know!) and pickled mackrel that I’ll be eating, washed down with copious amounts of Dunkel and Schwarzbier. Clarence is going to Berlin, people! It’s going to be great.
In the meantime, I hope you have a great Easter. Regardless of your convictions about that whole resurrection thing, I think that spring is something that everybody can get behind.
Booze or lose: Cannibale Café
Cannibale Café
93, rue Jean Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Paris
Métro: Couronnes
http://www.myspace.com/lecannibalecafe
So I’m realizing that Booze or Lose might be the most short-lived of these “features.” While I find myself happy to describe in excruciating detail everything I eat, I find myself reluctant to tell you about bars I like. This isn’t because I think I’m too cool or in the know (believe me, it’s never ever because I think I’m too cool or in the know), but mainly because there are only so many ways you can say “well, they have a zinc bar, good lighting, and I suspect that everyone who frequents this place shops only at APC and has better taste in music than I do.” Basically every bar I like in this town would fit that description, and it’s kind of boring to see that rehashed weekly on a blog.
I will mention the Cannibale Café, however, because it seems to do aforementioned combination quite well. Plus they have a lot of live music and what they describe as a “copious brunch on Sundays.” I haven’t been to their copious brunch, but I like that particular adjective when paired with brunch very, very much. One downside is that their pints of 1664 (totally hip and darling to buy in the US, more or less like PBR over here on this side of the pond) are a whopping 6.50€. That’s like thirty-seven dollars or so. Conversion humor! Always a giggle. Well, not quite as much as it used to be, as apparently the euro is tanking. While I know that there are much larger forces at work behind this economic development, I can’t help but suspect (in my own admittedly solipsistic way) that it has something to do with the fact that I’m finally getting paid in euros. Where was Greece when I was hemorrhaging cash in Europe circa 2008? Anyway, however you do the math, it’s an expensive beer. An ex-boyfriend of mine had some kind of theory about what he described as eight-dollar-beer places. I don’t exactly remember the theory. I think it was mainly an attempt to talk into frequenting places with sticky floors and bargain pitchers of Coors Light. But he did nail the price point and the sheer ridiculousness of an eight-dollar beer has stuck with me.
This isn’t a very sunny review.
I do really like this place!
One particularly enjoyable evening at Cannibale recently included a performance by Hold Your Horses, a Franco-American group that is getting a fair amount of internet buzz because of their video for “70 Million.” Have you seen it yet?
Who am I kidding? Not only have you already seen it, half of you have probably already integrated it into your Art History 101 syllabus. You are such savvy pedagogues, you 50% of my readership. But anyway, I like this video very much. It’s one of the better things to go viral in the past month or so.
Speaking of going viral, I now bring you a Pettiness Campaign 2010 update. I’m pleased to related that Hold Your Horses has over 10 times as many views as an unnamed other person’s video, which has stalled slightly in its exponential ascent to that peculiar heaven inhabited by Glenn Beck. B convinced me that there was no way I could possibly continue in my contempt-filled, elitist-expat lifestyle without actually watching some of Mr. Beck’s videos. I am finding them to be like ill-reasoned, sputtering crack cocaine. I like it when he gets so worked up that he just starts shooting off a series of random, unrelated nouns. I also kind of lose my shit every single time he turns to the chalkboard. What an amazing prop! Depressingly, if success can be defined in quantifiable terms (does late capitalism really teach us any other lesson?), Mr. Beck is more successful than anyone else in the universe. He also can apparently charge $120 for the privilege of going to a stadium and watching him rant about progressivism and fuck around on his chalkboard on the Jumbotron. I don’t have any pithy commentary on that little gem of a factoid, as all I could do when I looked up his ticket prices on Ticketmaster was soundlessly open and close my mouth in a piscine gesture of disbelief.
This entry is becoming entirely unrelated to Cannibale Café. I’ll end it now, before some poor soul seeking a bar recommendation on Google has to slog through another six paragraphs of my bullshit. Sorry poor soul! I’d definitely recommend you go to Cannibale! Just order wine, okay?
Define: Worthless English Teacher
Me: So next week we’ll have something like a pseudo-midterm, so make sure you show up and tell your friends if they missed class today. Be here or be [I draw a square in the air.]
[Gesture is met with a mixture of blank and confused looks.]
Me: You know, be there or be square.
Student: To be square is…
Me: Um, you know, like Huey Lewis and the News [I begin singing “Hip to Be Square.”]
[More puzzled looks.]
Me: Huey Lewis and the News guys! So GOOD! A square is somebody who isn’t cool, someone who is conservative, who doesn’t stay out late or get into trouble. Huey Lewis wanted us to think that it might be hip to be square, but in general if someone is a square, it’s kind of derogatory.
Student: So I could say, “I’m making a party, be there or be square!”
Me: Well, yes, except if you say that you are “making a party” you will be every American’s stereotype of a European.
Student: Yes, I’m sorry. “I have a party.” [We’ve already reviewed this in class, twice.]
Me: Correct. Also, “square” isn’t really something people say very much anymore. It’s kind of a 1950s thing, I think.
Student: Then why have we spent all this time on it?
Me: You’ve got me. Just come to class next week for the exam, okay?
Student: We don’t have school next Monday.
Me: Why on earth not? We’ve already had more vacation days than days of class this semester!
Student: It’s Easter.
Me: Easter is on Sunday.
Student: It’s Easter Monday! It’s a national holiday in France.
Me: Are you kidding? Easter is on Sunday.
Student: But if the only day we got off for Easter was Sunday, then it wouldn’t really be a holiday, it would just be a weekend.
Me: Your reasoning is impeccable.
Student: Thanks!
Me: Man, you frogs are excellent at coming up with reasons to not come to work or school.
Student: We’re not square!
Me: Nope, you are not a country full of squares.
Student: Neato!
Me: About that…
* * *
Photo courtesy of M. Starik, known to her friends as alternately as chickadee, kitten, and Miss Thang (well, not the last one, but we could definitely start.)
The Bear-Garden 