Mille six cent dix

My neighbor stopped by today to invite me to a party he is throwing tonight for his birthday (a canny way of preventing people from calling the cops when it gets too loud, I suspect).  I told him I wasn’t sure if I could come, but that I appreciated the invitation and that he had my full support to rage on until the wee hours.  Or something less articulate than that in French.  He informed me that this party could also be regarded as a kind of building birthday party, as he recently did some research and discovered that the bones of this building date to 1610, making my apartment 400 years old. I had a brief moment of second language stupidity as I didn’t quite understand “1610” at first (numbers are my nemesis) and then seemed excessively amazed when I finally figured out what he was saying.  But we shared a nice laugh about America being a young country.

I guess it’s no wonder, then, that my doorways are a bit crooked, my floors are uneven, and that the wiring seems a bit dicey.  We should all be so lucky to look this good at 400 years old.

* * *

Also, my greatest dream came true today when somebody arrived here by Googling “world’s worst cyst.” Welcome, dear reader! You are my kind of gal. Or guy. While I can’t help you with your query, I’d love to know what you find out.

Clarence in Paris: Pho Banh Cuon 14

Pho Banh Cuon 14

129 Avenue de Choisy, 75013 Paris

Métro:  Tolbiac

I’ve always been lucky to live in places with excellent Vietnamese food. Growing up in Denver, we often went out for phở on Federal Boulevard when we would ditch class in the afternoons in high school (for the record, I still really like Pho 95 in Denver, popularity be damned.) Moving to Orange County for graduate school yields a few perks, including access to gorgeous beaches and close proximity to Westminster and Garden Grove, where you can take phở eating as seriously as you might in Saigon. While I know that it’s traditionally a breakfast thing, to me phở is most appealing when I’m fighting a cold or when it’s cold and dismal outside. As it’s basically been the latter situation for the past four months in Paris (why, oh why do all the best cities involve WINTER?), I’ve took my phở-finding in this town quite seriously.

I assumed (warning:  political correctness lapse forthcoming) that France’s colonial history in Vietnam would yield a serious wealth of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris. To be honest, so far I’ve been rather disappointed.  I (like my fantasy-friend Mark Bittman), was excited to eat bánh mì in Paris, as it seems like the classic ingredients of phở served on a baguette (with the addition of lovely French things like good pâté) would be the ultimate in French-Vietnamese street food. And my conclusion? Eh. They make some decent bánh mì at Thieng Heng (to the left of the Tang Frères supermarket at 50 rue d’Ivry in the 13th) and Saigon Sandwiches (8 rue de la Présentation in the 11th). Predictibly, the baguettes are better and so is the pâté – though they are closer to the consistency of rillettes at both locations. But compared to the tangy, spicy bánh mì I’ve eaten in New York and Los Angeles, the French versions are bland, bland, bland. Where are the bird chiles or the jalapeños?  Where is the vinegary bite to the carrots and the daikon? Actually, where is the daikon?! This isn’t exactly surprising – the French palate is entirely intolerant of spicy food. The French family that my friend B lives with nearly died when he served them a pretty tame chili con carne. And before anyone starts getting agitated about this minor criticism I’m making of the French palate (I can anticipate the Angry Reader before he even shows up now!), I’ll acquiesce and say that I’m sure my tastebuds have been so damaged by my spicy-food promiscuity that I’m numb to the kind of nuance the average French person takes for granted.

But seriously guys, grow a pair.

Obviously, I’m a terrible food writer because I spend half my entry talking about my preferences before I get to my actual review of the restaurant in question. So anyway, to get to Pho Banh Cuon 14. It’s pretty good! It’s definitely the best phở I’ve found in Paris! And the crowds seem to agree – this place is always packed and you can anticipate standing in line for about ten minutes outside, especially if you are in a larger group of people (I definitely wouldn’t go on a weekend if I was with more than three people). They have a pretty standard list of phở meat options, including rare steak, beef meatballs, tripe, and chicken (no tendon, which is disappointing, and no seafood options, but maybe that is a California thing?). Their phở is served with white onions, greens that resemble dandelion greens, Thai basil, Thai chili peppers, lemon wedges, bean sprouts, and cilantro, as well as the requisite Sriracha (the only thing standing between this spicy-food addict and madness in Paris). The broth is hearty and satisfying, and I believe that they make their rice noodles in house.  In every possible way, this phở gets the job done. They also have some pretty killer fried spring rolls (a bit of a misnomer, as they are entirely filled with pork) and an assortment of drinks involving sweet azuki beans, coconut milk, and tapioca pearls if that is your thing. The staff is friendly and efficient. Would I recommend that you go here if you were in Paris for a weekend? Absolutely not. But if you are spending an extended period of time in Paris and you’ve got certain needs, Pho Banh Cuon 14 is a pretty great place to get those met. Incidentally, how bobo am I to feel like I need decent phở on a regular basis? Talk about a First World problem!

Details: Open everyday from 9 a.m to 11 p.m. They don’t take reservations (obviously, it’s a phở place). Be prepared to wait in the evenings, and avoid bringing a large group. They don’t accept bank or credit cards, and there isn’t an ATM nearby, so come with cash in hand.

Neato

Scene:  My public speaking class. I’ve just slogged through a terrible rhetoric activity with my students.

Me:  So what references does the author make to make his argument relatable to his audience?

Student 1:  He talks about yoga and Tai Chi.  A lot of people do yoga and Tai Chi.

Student 2:  If by a lot of people you mean bobos.  Bobos do yoga and Tai Chi.

Me:  Hipsters too!  Don’t forget about the hipsters.

(My comment is met with quizzical looks.)

Student 2:  What is this hipsters?

Me:  Oh, um, well, hipsters are kind of like bobos. More into indie music maybe. But you know, hybrid cars. American Apparel. Skinny jeans. Chuck Taylors. Organic foods. Wayfarers. French New Wave films. The occasional apolitical keffiyeh.  That kind of thing. I guess it’s an American term.

Student 1:  But bobos are kind of old in France.  Are hipsters old?

Me:  No, I guess hipsters are mostly in their twenties and early thirties in the US.

Student 2:  So people say, “I am a hipster?”

Me:  Actually no, I think that one of the important things about being a hipster is that nobody actually thinks they are one.  It’s kind of a derogatory term.

(Students begin quizzing me about hipster culture.  They appear to be much more interested in this than classical rhetoric.  Suddenly I’m trying to explain Williamsburg, Coachella, Urban Outfitters, and why people might enjoy drinking blue collar beer.)

Student 2:  What about the Arcade Fire? Is that a hipster band?

Me:  Totally.  Look, there’s some websites you can visit if you are really curious. (I write the addresses for Stuff White People Like, Hipster Runoff, and Cobrasnake on the board.  I figure this is sort of like an American culture lesson.)  Anyway, are there any questions left about the rhetorical concepts I went over earlier?

Student 1:  Or about hipsters?

Me:  You only get one more question about hipsters.

Student 1:  Are you a hipster?

(Before I can respond, Student 2 interrupts)

Student 2:  That’s a trick question!  She said that no real hipster will say that they are a hipster.

Me:  I guess you’ll never know if I’m a hipster or not.

(Students look very disappointed.)

Me:  Honestly, no, I don’t think I would qualify as a hipster.  I’m sort of the wrong kind of dorky to be a hipster.

Student 1:  The wrong kind of dorky?

Me:  I mean, I don’t really know about what’s cool or happening.  Like right there, nobody who says “cool or happening” is really that cool or happening.

Student 2:  You think you are a dork?

Me:  Yeah, but not the cool kind that might make people think I’m a hipster.

Student 2:  I don’t think you are a dork.  I think you are neato!  (I taught them “neato.”  Yes, I occasionally teach French youth archaic slang and encourage them to use it in their daily lives.  Sue me).

Me:  Well, thank you.  You get an A.

Student 2:  A what?

Me:  Nevermind.

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.

Bottom feeding with John Mayer

It’s no secret around here that I am a fan of the worst of the worst that pop culture serves up in terms of low-brow entertainment. I had a party to celebrate the finale of the second season of Rock of Love. I watch The Hills with a kind of rabid devotion. That said, I try to keep these fixations entirely separate from my academic life. I find academics who write about Britney Spears and Pierre Bourdieu to be entirely distasteful. Should you find yourself in my classroom (poor soul), I won’t try to explain the society of the spectacle to you via TMZ. Well, maybe I will, but I’ll try to also get some Shakespeare in there as well. I do staunchly believe in the idea of serious art and serious literature and while I do believe that our cultural definitions of such are always in a state of flux, I do believe that there is such a thing as a transcendent aesthetic production and that it is something worth defending. If that makes me an elitist, well, I also have some arugula in my fridge. It was only a matter of time.

To return to my extra-curricular bottom feeding, however, I’ve been following the press antics (semantic antics! whee!) of John Mayer for a while now. I’ve always thought the guy was kind of a sub-par celebrity—both in looks and talent—though I’ll admit that when I went to one of his concerts because an ex-boyfriend was a fan (red flag!), I didn’t have an entirely awful time. For those of you that live under a rock, Mayer has made quite a name for himself as an enfant terrible in the past few years, mainly by dating and manhandling the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson and making insanely quotable comments about those relationships to the press. I started reading his Twitter and some of his interviews because there is something really compelling about this guy’s ability to be glib and offensive. Say what you will about the recent spate of bad press that Mayer has received on account of his comments in Playboy on the n-word, his ex-girlfriends, and his masturbatory habits, it takes a certain kind of savoir-faire to produce these endlessly riveting sound bytes. I’m not going to address Mayer’s comments on race – others have done it more adeptly than I could – though I will say that I think Jon Caramanica of the New York Times is right to point out that there is something unsettling about the perniciousness that undergirds Mayer’s naïveté on this subject.

I think that what everyone finds especially bothersome (and what I find perversely intriguing) about Mayer’s Playboy interview is that the guy isn’t dumb. Not by a long shot. Despite the chorus of reprisal and admonition that has arisen in response to Mayer’s statements—much of it charged with pathos and some of it even articulate and astute—it appears that like it or not, Mayer’s bons mots are the most tenacious phrases in this conversation, the most likely to survive the tendency of popular culture to turn everything into grist for the mill. That is to say, there is something really smart about Mayer’s stupidity, as it utterly resists apology, critique, or explaining away. As Avital Ronell writes in the introduction to her genius book on this very subject, “stupidity has evinced a mute resistance to political urgency, an instance of an unaccountable ethical hiatus.  In fact, stupidity, purveyor of self-assured assertiveness mutes just about everything that would seek to disturb its impervious hierarchies.” There’s nothing smart to be said as a critique of Mayer’s interview, because the din of his stupid commentary will always be louder. Moreover, there’s no talking back to this kind of thing because it’s merely a symptom of something larger, something that Ronell calls modernity (I might call it the Sarah Palin effect).  As Ronell writes,

“Stupidity, the indelible tag of modernity, is our symptom. Marking an original humiliation of the subject, stupidity resolves into the low-energy, everyday life trauma with which we live. It throws us. Following Barthes, it functions as the Thing to the extent that it wards off the symbolization that it also demands. Like life itself, stupidity, according to Flaubert, cannot be summed up or properly understood but resembles a natural object – a stone or a mountain. One cannot understand a stone or a mountain, or offer a critique or a twelve-step program to change their descriptions.”

Yes, while Mayer’s statements are at once symptomatic of racism, misogyny, malignant narcissism, and (perhaps most offensively) bad taste, they nevertheless aren’t capable of being effectively diagnosed by any of these counterfoils. And as for the consequences, the requisite twelve-step program? Mayer’s apology came in the form of a seemingly heartfelt and teary speech to his fans and bandmates at a recent concert (Google it if you are curious, again, I’ve got six readers and Broseph’s got a yacht.) The habitual public relations prescription of swift withdrawal from the public and a short stint in self-gratifying American therapy followed by a well-rehearsed apology spiel on the talk-show circuit appears to have already gone into effect. Mayer is suddenly uncharacteristically mum despite the whirlwind of commentary in which he now finds himself at the center. I for one wish that he would keep talking, but my motivations towards the popular cultural objects of my affection are anything but pure.

I haven’t quoted any of the interview for you here. My reasons for not doing so are mixed, but I didn’t want this to be a mere rehashing of things you’ve likely read before. There is one moment in the interview, however, that I find to be pretty genius and worth the e-ink. It’s gotten a lot of press, as it is the moment in which Mayer recounts his sexual relationship with Jessica Simpson and describes her as “sexual napalm.” He gives a standard-issue self-congratulatory smart guy dismissal of Simpson, saying something about how before he met Simpson, he had never been the kind of guy to date a girl like that (I’m sure none of them are). Following a vague description of Simpson’s incendiary sexual prowess, he says: “There are people in the world who have the power to change our values. Have you ever been with a girl who made you want to quit the rest of your life? Did you ever say, ‘I want to quit my life and just f***in’ snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to f**k you, I would start selling all my s**t just to keep f***ing you.'” An inane formulation, yes, but it’s also a startlingly adept articulation of a peculiar kind of object relation, the one where the subject is confronted with an object so mesmerizing in its ridiculousness as to be worth dismantling his life over in order to feed the addiction. Can I tell you, dear reader, how entirely thrown I was by this statement? I’ve experienced this kind of thing. Have you? Have people written about this? Since I read the interview it’s practically all I can think about. I’ve also taken to using the phrase “______ makes me want to quit my whole life and just f***in’ snort it” to describe things like rhubarb jam and the Dirty Projectors’ most recent album.  Mayer’s phrase might not have the fortitude that “heaving” has, but right out of the gate I’m really enjoying it.