Category: social skills

June 20, 2010

To one swell guy

I don’t know if you’ve met my dad, but if you haven’t you really ought to. He’s one fantastic dude. I’m actually one of those kids who suffered because her parents were a little bit too cool, rendering me a stick-up-the-ass teetotaler in my teens and early twenties. After all, I figured that the only way to rebel when faced with too cool parents is to be a square. Fortunately I got over that phase and realized that my dad isn’t just somebody who is all the things a great father ought to be, he’s also all the things that a great friend ought to be. And that’s a trickier balance than you might expect.

I was a lucky kid in that I got to spend a lot of time with my dad growing up. While I occasionally referred to him as a “fun fascist” because of all of the activities—skiing, snowboarding, camping, mountain biking, hiking, windsurfing—that filled our family weekends and vacations, I’m now grateful that he instilled in me that being active and spending time outside will do wonders for one’s outlook on life. My dad was also pretty devoted to reading to me when I was a kid and he spent many long hours every night reading aloud stacks and stacks of books to me. I know that not everybody is fortunate enough to have a lot of quality time with both their parents—especially when both of them work—and I feel really blessed to have had the kind of childhood that I did.

As an adult, I’ve come to discover that my father is a really tender, non-judgmental listener and dispenser of good advice. I’ve come to rely more and more on his wisdom in recent years. My father hasn’t led a very traditional life – his decisions have more often prioritized living to the fullest in the present moment. Perhaps on account of this he doesn’t always resemble other men of his age or generation. He also often seems to be one of the happiest and sanest people I know, so maybe we should all take a lesson from him. I deeply admire his enthusiasm for even the smallest things in life, his voracious appetite for all things fascinating and new, and his tremendous capacity for generosity, both with the people he loves and complete strangers. He’s also hands-down the most fun guy you’ll ever meet and I doubt anybody that knows him would argue otherwise. His vigor and kindness are contagious and I know that the corners of the world that he inhabits are much the better for his presence.

So here’s a rather sappy shout-out to my dad – I miss you today and sure wish we could be spending it together. Happy Father’s Day!

June 19, 2010

The muttering retreats

Before I start complaining, here’s a treat:

M. Starik has put up some great new work from her trip to Rome! I suggest you check it out, preferrably while sipping a nice cup of coffee this afternoon.

* * *

So it’s starting to look less and less likely that I’ll be able to afford a trip back to the US this summer. I’m still hoping that the cost of flights will go down a bit when the airlines realize that charging people obscene amounts of money is unlikely to be a good strategy for recuperating their volcano-related losses. I’m sad I won’t get to see my parents and friends for a while, and I’m especially sad to be missing the wedding of some people who are exceptionally dear to me. But fifteen hundred dollars for a plane ticket is highway fucking robbery.

Moreover, I’ve been getting a little edgy with Paris for the past few weeks. The brusqueness of the city has been getting to me. I’m tired of being run into on the street or in the market, apologizing like any normal human being, and being stared down like I’m some mal élevé punk. Today at Monoprix a guy swung around suddenly and slammed his shopping basket directly into my babymaker (sorry for that) and I winced slightly. “Pardon!” he barked angrily, as if it was I who had suddenly changed vector and injured someone in the process.

In another tale of Francophone frustration, all of the loose change under my bed amounted large jars of one, two, and five centimes (as well as a handful of pennies and some krone). Like any normal American, B wanted to sort the change, take it to the bank, and exchange it for cash. I laughed aloud and said that there was no way in hell you could do that at a French bank. He scoffed at me, carefully sorted and counted the change, and then left to prove me wrong (hoping to end up thirteen euro or so richer for his trouble). Poor guy. Apparently the people at my bank looked at him like he was raised in a barn when he came through the door with some jars of change. Not only did they refuse to give him any coin sleeves to sort the change, they claimed that they have no cash on the premises (coin or paper). At a bank. Not a 7-11. At a financial institution where people store their money with the idea that they will someday probably want to have access to it. B, daunted but not broken, visited three other banks with similar accounts of their incomprehensible place within the socius. One teller suggested B visit a currency exchange bureau, which still fill the streets of Paris despite the fact that nobody uses traveler’s checks or carries cash anymore as most people rely on ATMs to obtain foreign currency while traveling. B quickly discovered that these places are now just havens for pickpockets, who were blithely unloading wallets filled with diverse currencies on the counter of the bureau. Will a currency exchange bureau happily exchange piles of obviously stolen currency? Yes, yes they will. Will a currency exchange bureau exchange coin for cash, even for a fee? No, no they will not. Do said currency exchange places own change sorting machines? Yes, yes they do. Is France an entirely nonsensical country? You be the judge. B returned to my house two hours later, chagrined. I suggested that since it wasn’t really our money in the first place, we should just give it to a homeless person. Frayed to his last nerve, B said tartly, “Nice. Now where exactly do you think that homeless guy would take it to turn it into cash?”

* * *

I finally kinda lost it today when we were running errands and decided that it would be nice to pick up a rotisserie chicken for lunch on the way back to my apartment. We walked right by the rotisserie place and the guy was out front with a dozen or so chickens and those yummy potatoes that they make in the drippings. As we had some other errands to run, we decided to swing by when we were done. A mere half hour later when we arrived back at the rotisserie place, we found it shuttered. At 1:30 p.m. On a weekday. Upon further inspection, we read that the store was closed everyday for lunch from 1-4 p.m. Because of course one needs to take a three hour lunch every day. Of course.

Look, I’m not the person who is going to knock how the French do things. I get it – these are just basic cultural differences. Frankly I don’t always love how nicey-nice Americans are to strangers, or how the ridiculous lengths to which American service industry goes to because “the customer is always right,” or that a lot of people I know in the States take fifteen minute lunches and scarf their sandwiches at their desks. But sometimes being here makes me just feel achingly, frustratingly American.

* * *

Finally, we’ve been rewatching Arrested Development the past few weeks (even better than I remembered, BTW) and the streaming video site we are using has been doing these completely brutal Chipotle banner ads. By “completely brutal,” I mean that they make me want a Chipotle burrito so bad that I actually hurt with frustration. B shares my despair that the closest we might be to American-style Mexican food of any iteration this summer might be Dolores in Berlin, so we both moan loudly whenever the banner ads come up. We’ve been fantasizing like jackasses about how awesome it would be to go to a generic American suburban shopping center for an afternoon to go to Target and eat at Chipotle. Seriously, if I went into a Target right now my brain would probably explode from consumer glee. Perhaps it’s better that I stay away for a while. Go eat some Mexican food for me. Better yet, send me some refried beans or pickled jalapeños and and I’ll send you something delicious from France.

June 16, 2010

In which I somehow artfully segue from a rant about American Apparel into a tender farewell

Is anybody else following these Gawker-led assaults on American Apparel? To be honest, I’m kinda conflicted about the whole thing. I shop there on a regular basis, as do most of my friends. I even recently encouraged a reluctant B to shop there for the first time when he needed some new t-shirts. None of us would be considered particularly “on-brand” from the perspective of AA corporate style. Most of us take serious issue with how material consumption structures life in contemporary society. Not to generalize for the people I’m close to, but I think the logic that we all share is that AA produces logo-free, decent-quality, sweatshop-free basics. I guess the last part is the most important to me on some level, as I’ve certainly encountered the occasional lapse in quality in AA products and find their aesthetic to be increasingly visible in its branding, if not to my parent’s generation certainly to people in my own peer group. But I’ve felt somewhat better about buying from AA based on their well-publicized mode of semi-ethical production. I’ve at least felt like it isn’t the worst place to buy an article of clothing if you have some sense of remorse about your object world being brought to you on the backs of the poor.

While I’ve certainly heard accounts of the snobbishness that goes on toward customers at AA stores, I’ve never felt particularly ill-treated while shopping there. That said, I tend to like being ignored when I’m buying things, so if you wanted legitimate help from a sales clerk I probably would steer you elsewhere. Some of the clothes have felt frustratingly ill-sized and I’ll admit it’s maddening to be a size 4 and feel like everything is too small. My local AA’s in Southern California seemed relatively diverse in their staffing, so I was surprised to read in these tell-all forums about the seemingly rampant discrimination that takes place behind the scenes. I have found AA employees to be uniformly good-looking and hyper-conformist to the brand aesthetic, which seems to support the accounts of a horrifying staffing process that involves constant photographing of both potential and current employees. I was under the impression that this sort of thing was illegal. However, I just watched a woman on a reality show on national television ask a potential assistant during a job interview if he slept around a lot, so apparently I’m just out of touch with how worker’s rights have devolved in the past decade or so. I guess I’m rather curious if AA is really an exceptional case, or if the lookism that they perpetuate part of most clothing stores’s modus operandi at this point in time. That is to say, I don’t see any unattractive, off-brand employees at most high-end retailers. Is the issue here that AA brands itself as an ethical company in its advertising while resorting to retrograde hiring practices behind the scenes? I see scores of angry commenters on Gawker calling for the end of American Apparel – is it better to shop somewhere with better retail hiring practices and more ethically problematic ones at the level of production? I’m genuinely asking this question, in part because I don’t see any other retailers at the level of mass production and distribution that sell domestically-produced, sweatshop-free clothing, manufactured by factory workers who are given access to low-cost meal programs and medical care. Is it an incredibly ugly truth that these standards are a radical departure from the manufacturing protocols of most other major US clothing retailers? Yes. Should the AA retail employees unionize (or at least organize) and disrupt the chain of distribution until they are afforded the basic rights of all taxpaying workers in the US? Absolutely. Are the anonymous Gawker forums the place to do such a thing? I kinda doubt it. If you are seeing chronic sexism, lookism, and other kinds of discrimination in your workplace as high as the corporate level, get legal representation and put your name on your complaint. While the US system isn’t designed to help, speak for, or even acknowledge the existence of the people who work in those clothing factories, it has become incredibly adept at addressing the issues of middle-class and upper-middle class workers suffering from discrimination in the past few decades, especially in a context this photogenic and media-friendly. I’m a little burnt out on news stories about the banker who was fired because she was too pretty (and also posting sexy photographs of herself on the internet). Or the online plaints of the AA employee who was fired because her nail polish was chipped. I’ll bet you that’s nothing compared to the labor practices at your friendly neighborhood Chinese megafactory that produces the 3 dollar t-shirts that fill your local Wal-Mart (or, for that matter, the labor practices at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart).

What sayeth ye, dearest reader? I’m totally ready to face the accusation that I’m merely providing a palliative rationale for my own consumption to appease the gnawing worry that buying anything makes me part of the problem. I’ll say it upfront: I’m probably providing a palliative rationale for my own consumption to appease the gnawing worry that by buying anything, I’m already a part of the problem. I’m also ready to face the music on the fact that while I complain about the reality-television-ification of our culture that extends to the way in which our news is framed and delivered, I’m also one of it’s greediest consumers. Is this an impasse? Am I always-already a hypocrite?

My friends BC and S would probably say yes, if I can put words in their mouths. BC, S, B and I have been hanging out a lot in the past two weeks, as we’ve been trying to jam in quality time before S’s departure from Paris today (sob). The four of us gotten into a lot of heated debates, eaten some delicious meals at Rouammit and Le Hangar, watched some football and aired some ugly patriotism, prepared and consumed a gumbo feast, drank several bottles of French-branded tequila and whiskey, and reviewed our respective coming-of-age via hip-hop music for hours and hours on end (well, that was the boys, not me). It’s been pretty great and I’ve been in my sweet spot of being the girl who gets to hang out with all the cool guys, something that my inner geeky seventh grader never fails to enjoy. I’m so happy to know these guys and to be even remotely hip enough to roll with them.

As for S: Man, are we sad to see you go! I know you are returning to your überlovely girlfriend in the second (or third, depending on how you count) best city in the world, but we sure wish you could have stuck around here for a bit longer. I’m so pleased that somehow in the last few months we went from being exceedingly polite strangers to ragging on one another like old friends. Please feel free to think of this blog as a surrogate for Facebook whenever you like. We here at Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background should be so lucky. Vaya con dios, brah. You will be missed.

June 8, 2010

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.

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!