There's never enough time in the day

...to finish all of the work and all of the fucking around that I want to get done. But all in all, it was a useful Saturday. I woke up early but went to class late. I shared a syllabus and spied on my neighbor's sketches. I took a nap, woke up, took a subway, hung out with a three year old and her mother. I tried to get some work then tried to get some work done then drank some wine, and now here we are.

Another year, another new start

Another fun French family moment

I don't mean to always be slightly critical of France. Really, I'm in love with France, but I guess the eye-rolling, "oh, the french" moments are easiest to point out since all of the lovely things that I love about being here are more general: everyday attitudes and pretty places.

With that disclaimer, I had another funny little encounter with a French family.

This time it was a hot, fancy French mom with two trendy little girls in the H&M underwear section. The littlest girl was sort of shifting back and forth to the music in a kind of heavy, more like imitating a monkey than dancing way. At first her mom just asked sort of flatly "what are you doing, are you dancing?" The girl didn't answer, just kept going with her caveman moves. The mother looked at her again and said "c'est atroce" (that's atrocious.")

Fête de l'humanité

(1) This year was the 80th fête de l'humanité, a giant communist festival outside of Paris where each region's communist party sets up a booth with petitions, speeches, pamphlets and cute communist puns. But it's also just a big music festival with a lefty spirit, basically more disgustingly innovative dreadlocks, Palestinian flags and nice people than the Euro-bro summer music festival I went to last month.

(2) So, in this setting, this makes perfect sense: an old French rock star, Jacques Dutronc, starts singing one of his classic songs called "J'aime les filles" or "I love girls." From the extreme distance of where I am sitting from the stage I can't see much, but suddenly notice a small red blob on the stage that is not in any of the shots projected onto the giant screen. It kind of looks like a midget? Well, yes it is. Finally, Jacques introduces this tiny woman in a ridiculous red dress as Stéphanie, his "porte-bonheur" and "mascotte" (good-luck charm and mascot). Then she tells some jokes.

The only clip I could find is the end of the song, where, gotta show love for the Corsicans by holding up that Corsican flag your midget keeps in her pocket?
So I guess its just cultural differences, but even the crunchiest of the Frenchies didn't seem to find this a little fucked up. I guess France is a little behind the US, what with all our more enlightened little people entertainment. Or keeping midgets as mascots has always been more of a European thing.

My latest repeat song

This is a song that I discovered thanks to my roommate. I love it, I listened to it all day, at least 15 times.

Party Pumpernickel

I had two very cultural moments this weekend during or surrounding my roommate's birthday in the village where her parents live.

1) One of my roommate's neighbors from when she lived in LA came all the way to France for this party. Whenever they said his name, I couldn't imagine what it would be in English. The way I heard it in French was Eeroueen, I thought his name might be Heroin, but that seemed too ridiculous to be true. Turns out it was Irwin. Anyways the American cultural moment was this. Irwin was telling me about his three daughters, about how well they got along, how old they were, their relationship status etc. Then he asked me, "would you like to see a picture of my pride and joy?" I answered sure, and he pulls out a laminated photo of a bottle of pride laundry detergent and a bottle of joy dish soap.

2) On the train on the way back to Paris, I was sitting across the aisle from a mother and her daughter. The little girl was about 4 and very chatty, the mother seemed a bit tired by the constant chatter from her daughter, and answered her sort of exasperatedly. Getting off the train, the mother told the daughter they should just wait until everyone got off, that they were in no hurry and that she didn't want to get crushed by the crowd. The little girl responded "maman, t'es un amour de maman, et je ne veux pas que tu sois coincé par ces gens' (you're a love of a mother, and I don't want you to be crushed by these people). Then she continued, "Maman, t'es un amour de maman et tu vas me manquer." (you're a love of a mother and I'm going to miss you.) Her mom was confused by this and said that they were going to get off together and that she was not leaving her, and the little girl answered "tu vas me manquer quand je serais adulte et quand je quittera la maison pour habiter avec Alexandre" (I'm going to miss you when I'm an adult and I leave home to live with Alexander). Her mom laughed and said that she was sure she still had a bit of time left before that happened.

Barefeet in a heartbeat

This is a silly fun group from Quebec that we saw at the Eurockéenes festival. I can't say that I really like penny-loafers or deck shoes though.