February 16, 2010

The youth of today

A big part of my job are these Big Brother-style language laboratory type of classes which I sit at the front of the room and watch students listen to articles in English or practice their pronunciation. For a long time I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be doing in this context. I can technically hear what it is they are listening to and what they say into the microphone. But nothing from my supervisors suggests that I am supposed to actually monitor them. Instructors who have been here for longer have told me that I should regard lab classes as free time and should just go ahead and read or surf the internet or clip my toenails. Apparently I’m basically here to prevent them from stealing the computers in the perpetually-impending class riot. To this I say: fat chance. When the anti-capitalist riots actually start, I’m hauling my American ass out of here as quickly as possible.

One amusing thing about the laboratory classroom setup is that I can see what they are doing on their computers and control their active applications from my central monitor. I suppose this means that I should turn off the internet function on their computers or at least stop them from looking at Facebook during class. In reality, it is much more fun to spy on them. I like particularly when they sign in to the chat feature and talk about me, clueless to the fact that I am watching the entire thing. Yesterday one kid wrote to his buddy about how do-able I am for fifteen minutes or so. My French teenager text-speak isn’t terribly good, but I am pretty sure that he wrote something about how he would want me to keep my glasses on when he (a-hem) was doing something wildly inappropriate to/with me on my desk. I choked on my coffee when I read his little plan and immediately looked up at him, thus totally blowing my cover. I blew coffee-snot out of my nose and he turned beet red. This is excellent evidence as far as I am concerned that these mega-dorktastic glasses that I’ve been sporting this year are working just fine.

In contrast, this morning I am a bit worse for the wear. One of my students just wrote to another: “Is the teacher’s dress on backwards?” Discreetly this time, I looked down and realized with dismay that yes, indeed, I’m sitting in front of a class pretending to be an credible adult, but my dress is quite obviously on backwards.

February 14, 2010

To my reader with love

Happy Valentine’s Day, dearest reader.

I’m not so intellectually evolved as to be able to entirely dismiss the hulking specter that is Valentine’s Day as a mere contrivance of capitalist marketing. It’s a day that makes a lot of people—single and paired-off alike—feel bad about things that they don’t feel quite as bad about on February 12^th or 15^th. I had written you a juicy, long post about my most over- and underwhelming Valentine’s Days of yore. It involved red Mylar heart-shaped balloons, a horse-and-carriage ride, a handful of supermarket bouquets, some Kundera books, and watching my date get stoned in the Whole Foods parking lot. I read it over this morning and realized that it is best left filed in the ever-growing stack of things I’ve labeled Overshare. It’s not that I’m really opposed to the practice of oversharing, as I’m sure you well know. But self-analysis can get dicey if you practice it too often, especially if you do it with the idea of producing a narrative arc. Sometimes I worry that I am beginning to be like Mrs. Witt in D. H. Lawrence’s novella St. Mawr. I think ole David Herbert got something really right about a personality type when he described her as such:

Lou shrank away. She was beginning to be afraid of her mother’s insatiable curiosity, that always looked for the snake under the flowers. Or rather, the maggots. Always this same morbid curiosity in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen. Always this air of alertness for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people’s motives. If anatomy pre-supposes a corpse, then psychology pre-supposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, pre-supposes a whole world-laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.

Yes, of course. When they are severed open, my past Valentine’s Days stink of corniness and mawkish expectations. But I realized this morning that all those poor gents that spent this silly holiday with yours truly deserve better than to have their histories splayed out on the internets for the sake of a laugh. Well, all of them except the Whole Foods guy. He joked that I was lucky to have an “almost-date” with him to the grocery store, fixed me a frozen pizza, and passed out blackout drunk on strawberry-flavored sparkling wine on my couch by 6 p.m. Face-down. Feel free to remind yourself of that if you find yourself on a less-than-remarkable date today. You’re welcome.

At any rate, while I’m not a big fan of this holiday, I’m definitely a big fan of you. I hope your day is lovely. Thanks for stopping by.

February 12, 2010

Clarence in Paris: La Briciola

La Briciola

64 rue Charlot, 75003 Paris

Métro: Filles du Calvaire

I regularly talk about how Southern California has made me contemptuous of numerous features of life elsewhere in the globe. These include, but are not limited to: winter, farmer’s markets, and people with normal-colored, uncapped teeth. What can I say, except that Southern California does weather, produce, and cosmetic dentistry very well. One thing that Southern California does not do particularly well, however, is pizza. Moving to Orange County from New York, I was bewildered to discover that the thin-crusted, wood-oven fired, San Marzano tomato, mozzarella di bufala, and fresh basil based pizzas that are ubiquitous in NYC are virtually non-existent in the land of never-ending sunshine. I say “virtually” non-existent because there is a peculiar breed of born-and-bred Angeleno who knows the most amazing place in the most non-descript shopping center somewhere in the Valley where you can get every single delicious thing you could ever dream of eating from anywhere in the world. I’m not going to knock that guy – sometimes he grows up and becomes Jonathan Gold, sharing his adventures in eating and delightful turn of phrase with the masses. Mr. Gold, you are always near the top of my fantasy husbands list. More often than not, however, that guy ends up being one of those sneering SoCal natives who hoard their shopping-center wisdom as a kind of collective fuck-you to the millions of transplants who flood into the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area every year in the hopes of becoming famous just for being famous. Don’t get me wrong, I get tourist-loathing. Native Coloradans like myself have a lot of sneers saved up for Texans on all-inclusive Breckenridge ski vacation. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know where to get good pizza in Southern California, but I’m sure that there is someone reading this who does. I might ask that if you are such a person, you either share the wealth or keep quiet, otherwise I might have to put you in the corner with my Angry Reader. Oh, and if your suggestion is that I go to Pizzeria Mozza, I’ll beat you to the punch and tell you that I did and am going to give it a resounding, overhyped “eh.” It was fine, I guess, and the celebrity-to-normal-person ratio seemed pretty high if that’s your thing. But it’s pizza, for chrissakes. Shouldn’t there be a little bit of the Everyman in a pizza place? No Everyman has ever walked through the door of Pizzeria Mozza and ordered himself a beer and a slice. Pizzeria Mozza is one of those uncomfortable LA places where all of the striving that everyone is doing leaves the air fetid with desperation and greed. It’s not my scene, but I’m glad you like it. I’ll just say that I think it is a little too smug. As my ex-boyfriend always said, “don’t go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back.” Don’t go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back, Pizzeria Mozza.

All of this is to say that the past few years of my life have seriously lowered my standards for pizza. My criteria have shifted from “Is that with fresh green manzanilla olives?” to “How many minutes did you say delivery takes? Does that come with cheesy breadsticks or is that extra?” Moving to Paris, I knew that I would have to forget about a few things that I really enjoy eating, like Mexican food. I included pizza in the list of desires better left abandoned. I was thus pleasantly surprised to find La Briciola, a seriously decent Neopolitan pizzeria in my Marais neighborhood. I really appreciate a cohesive aesthetic vision in restaurant décor and they hit the mark at La Briciola with exposed brick, stacked cans of beautiful tomatoes, chalkboard menus, and unfussy furniture. One of the reviews I read online said that the crowd was an intimidating combination of “fashion and gay” (my friend S: “You be fashion, I’ll be gay.”) Yes, while the neighborhood is a kind of Mecca for emergent fashion designers and gays, and the crowd therefore inevitably slick, La Briciola is a bustling, decidedly friendly place. The bartender is absurdly nice, making sure that you have a glass of wine and a dish of olives while you wait for a table. When we corrected our bill (they hadn’t charged us for our second carafe of their lovely house vino), the waitress brought over limoncello for the table. It’s stuff like that that makes you want to go back to a restaurant and La Briciola has it in spades.

And the pizza? It’s pretty damn good, excellent for Paris pizza, and it kicks the ass of anything I ate in Los Angeles. The crust is thin and foldable with beautiful little blackened bubbles on the bottom. The toppings are all natural and they are exactly what you would expect from a real Italian place (no pineapple here). I had the Romana, a gorgeously basic pie with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and anchovies. Some good eating and two carafes of their lovely house Chianti later, my friends and I found ourselves happily stuffed and inebriated at midnight, having whiled away the entire evening at the restaurant. If you asked me to list my favorite things about Paris, I would tell you that even at a hip, busy, people-waiting-hungrily-at-the-door joint you will never, ever be rushed away from your table. Sometimes that means you aren’t getting in that night and the hostess will probably tell you so. Sometimes that means a long wait. But I’ll happily wait for an hour for a table, especially if there is a bar. There is nothing I hate more than being served the check before your plates have even been cleared so that the table can be turned over as quickly as possible to a new party (I’m looking at you, Mozza). This simply doesn’t happen in Paris. I’m always bewildered that people complain about the service here. I don’t want to know my waiter’s middle name or what he thinks about the weather. I don’t need to be checked on fifteen times and interrupt my conversation with my dinner companion to explain to a stranger how much I’m enjoying my food. I can pour my own goddamn wine and water, thank you very much. And most importantly, if I want to make an evening of a meal, I should be able to. La Briciola is a lovely place to do just that and it deserves a visit.

Details: Open Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. Reservations accepted and encouraged, though not mandatory. Pizzas are around 15 euros each. Well-curated list of well-priced Italian wines. Anybody who can tell me what kind of olives they serve you to munch on (enormous, bottle-green, soft-flesh, milky, sweet, and vaguely waxy) gets an extra-special Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background reader prize (probably an obscene, animated, lenticular postcard). Hey, we’re on a budget here.

February 9, 2010

Sous les pavés…

Yesterday I returned to my job after three weeks of vacation time that inexplicably followed the two and half weeks of vacation time that I had for the holidays. The French are experts at not working. My students usually begin e-mailing me a week before a projected transit strike to explain that it is unlikely that they will be make it to class. I’ve seen doctor’s notes for ailments akin to a hangnail as an excuse for weeks of absence. My bank isn’t open on Sundays. Or Saturdays. Or Mondays. Or holidays. Or any day that is next to a holiday. Or after 5 p.m. Or between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. Basically, my bank is open two hours a week and they are annoyed if you try to come in during that short window of time to give them your money.

Anyway, while I’m frustrated about the banking part of France, I’m a big fan of the not-working-very-much part. As I’ve said in earlier entries, I’ve been cultivating a rather louche lifestyle of boozing and sleeping late the past few weeks. Yesterday the alarm clock ringing at 6 a.m. felt like cold hard death. My commute is somewhat unpleasant in the mornings, as I’m taking one of the busiest transit lines during rush hour. There are chartreuse vest-clad transit employees at my stop that are responsible for forcefully pushing people onto the trains. When I tell people this, they say, “Oh my goodness, I thought that only existed in Tokyo!” Well, now you know: Paris has caught up with Tokyo in terms of dehumanizing mass transit practices! The only real difference is that the French aren’t big sticklers about body odor like the Japanese are! I jest. Sort of. Actually, I don’t mind it too much. I’ve always been really into commuting, as it involves one of my favorite activities: mindlessly listening to pop music while not feeling guilty for being unproductive. Because I’m in transit! That’s productive! I’d rather do it in a car, but a train will do. I also get to snigger at the fascinated stares that my coffee travel mug garners from my fellow commuters. I can tell that Parisians really want to get with the portable coffee cup program, but they are just too scared. I understand – the Starbuckification of the world is rather terrifying. But a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning as you sit on a train is a nice thing indeed. Unclench, France.

I teach at a rather infamous public university in the suburbs of Paris. I don’t want to spell out where it is exactly (Google seems to be quite the floozy), but let’s just say that it’s where the aborted revolution of another era began and where the next one will probably start. While it’s a hotbed for leftist political dissent, it is also, as the arguably the most important living Marxist thinker said to me, “so cruel and very stark” (he taught there for many years). The graffiti in the classrooms alone deserves a special post. That will have to wait until another day — I’m honestly too tired from dealing with banlieue thugs today to go into too much detail.

There are only two things worth relating about my first few days back in the saddle. First, upon immediately forgetting the name of a student who had just introduced himself, I referred to him as “Mr. Make It Rain On Them Hoes.” To be fair, he did say that Lil Wayne was his favorite musician ever and seemed more than pleasantly amused by his new nickname. Maybe I’ll keep that one going as a morale builder, despite the fact that he hardly seems like enough of a VIP to make a stripper fall in love. God I love that song. Secondly, I had a vaguely poetical moment today on campus when I discovered that something about the cold made the sidewalk stones sound hollow as I walked across them. The requisite May ’68 reference to my friends was made, but we all acknowledged the whirling snow made the beach feel very far away indeed.

Finally, many of you have commented on M. Starik’s killer photographs. Please treat yourself to a visit to her Flickr page, now accessible on the sidebar under Monsieur Bigudi’s Photostream. Monsieur Bigudi is M’s version of Clarence. The two of them are thick as thieves.

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!

Tell your friends!