Question du Jour #23

Like my chest x-ray? A little gift from the French government following my medical visit today, which is required in order to receive the titre de séjour, which allows me to be here legally for the year. So now that I have this lovely artifact, I'm wondering:

What should I do with it?

Your ideas and creativity would be much appreciated.

Question du Jour #22

Pictured above is the waistband of a pair of pants I bought here in Paris, which provides a fine illustration of today's question:

What's with the profusion of very large tags inside French clothing?

Question du Jour #21

This is my dinner from this evening, a little while before I finished it. On Mondays, I have class from 5-7 at Paris 3 and then choir rehearsal from 7:30-9:45. I grab dinner between the two and eat it once I get to my seat at Eglise Saint-Marcel, where we rehearse. I know that, to the average French person, this sort of on-the-run eating is incomprehensible and precisely the reason that Americans are obese and carry guns. Nonetheless, I persist, because if I have to wait until after 10pm to eat dinner, I'm kind of a mess. Spanish I ain't. At any rate, while I'm eating my dinner on any given Monday, a few of my French choirmates will catch my eye and, while looking at me as though I have two heads, wish me bon appétit. My question is:

Do you think they're saying this sarcastically?

As though to say: "nice dinner ." They're sweet people, but I know that what I'm doing goes against everything they hold sacred.

Movieing Right Along, Take 2, Scene 1: The First Part About the Movies

This fine kir on the left came from a tasty lunch Nick and I had at a restaurant called Le Pommier in Bayeux, on the Middlebury weekend trip to Normandy. Once again, the Guide Michelin did us tasty.

What I didn't tell you about in the last post is something fantabulous in the world of movies here, something that I can't imagine existing in the U.S., and that is the unlimited movie card. UGC, one of the big cinema chains here, has created the Carte UCG Illimité in partnership with another chain of theatres and many smaller theatres, adding up to about 30 in Paris, so that cardholders can see all the movies they want for a flat rate per month. Can you imagine? I had to get one. The catch is that you have to get the card for a minimum of 12 months, and we're only going to be here for about another eight. So I made up my mind to make it worth the money, and I'm keeping track of the cost of the movie tickets I get for free, in order to make sure that I do get my euros' worth. The card costs 19,80 € per month, and since I got mine last Wednesday, I've seen 53,70 € worth of movies--plus an additional pre-release screening I got into for free by virtue of having the card. I feel as though I'm doing my duty. Although, to be fair, I counted tickets' full prices, and I could get them for less with my student i.d. Still, four-plus per week is more than adequate, although not likely a level of cinematic gluttony I'll be able to keep up all year. We shall see. But I did want to share with you some spoiler-free tidbits on the 20 I've seen so far, along with, when available, their Rotten Tomatoes (RT) ratings, where 60% and up is considered to be "fresh," rather than "rotten." If the movie has a foreign-language and an English title, I'll give you both. So, without further ado, here are the first ten (not necessarily in the order in which I saw them)...

1. Brüno (RT 68%): I really thought this movie was dreadful. Borat wasn't particularly my thing, although I thought it was better than this one. I may have laughed twice. Maybe I'm just not the Sacha Baron-Cohen type.

2. Ma vie pour la tienne/My Sister's Keeper (RT 47%): Fairly emotionally heavy-handed, although there were some lovely moments. From what some of my better-read classmates have said, painfully inferior to the book.

3. Whatever Works (RT 48%): Definitely more than one percentage point better than My Sister's Keeper. Pretty funny, and I'm a longtime Evan Rachel Wood fan, ever since she was on Once and Again from 1999-2002.

4. À Deriva/Adrift: Brazilian coming-of-age story, an "Un Certain Regard" (translated variously as "a glance" and "a certain look") selection in Cannes this year. Lots of bikinis. Thumbs-up, not specifically for the scanty coverage.

5. Tu n'aimeras point/Eyes Wide Open: A beautiful Israeli film that I especially appreciated because it's a window into the world of Hasidic Judaism, one that is difficult to penetrate from the outside. Another "Un Certain Regard" competitor this year. Definitely worth seeing.

6. Fish Tank: British film that won the jury prize at Cannes this year. More coming-of-age (I love this stuff!), badass Brit teenager. Not happy-go-lucky, per se, but good stuff.

7. Neuilly, sa mère!: The first actual French movie I saw this year. I understood most of it, but got a little lost on some of the slangier bits. Class tensions, teens. Not bad.

8. Le Petit Nicolas: Based on the characters created by René Goscinny et Jean-Jacques Sempé in the Petit Nicolas series of books. I thought it was a lot of fun, particularly because I could understand all of it.

9. Hôtel Woodstock/Taking Woodstock (RT 51%): Our friend Mike worked on editing this one, and so there was no way we were going to miss it. Whoever thought this rated 17 percentage points lower than Brüno must have been smoking something strong and Woodstocky indeed. The average of Nick's and my opinions was that this was a decent movie, although I really enjoy the Woodstock vibe; I just think it must have been a neat time to be alive. And my dad was there, at the festival, which makes the imagining fun, too.

10. La Danse: le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris/The Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (RT 69%): Why does the English-language title still have danse spelled in French? A very good question, but that's what the UK Rotten Tomatoes site--the only one I can get to from here--says. This was a loooong movie with some gorgeous dancing in it, but, in my opinion, insufficient narration. I would have loved to see some interviews with the dancers, but sadly, no such luck.

I'll leave you with these for now; more soon!

Question du Jour #20

This, for authenticity's sake, is a photo of the event to which I will be referring below, but given the sensitivity of some readers (myself among them), perhaps it's better that my phone's camera didn't pick up enough light for a clear picture. I took a couple afterwards of the main characters that will help to illustrate. In this corner, weighing in at...hold on, I'm going to go weigh him...18.4 lbs (it was actually 16 when I weighed him, but Nick got worried that the pup had been crash-dieting and double-checked, and got 18.4 three times in a row), we have Graham, our little boy puppy. Wow, he's lost weight. Hey, Dr. Neuman, if you're reading, it worked! And in this [other] corner, weighing in at...shoot, I don't know, let's just say a couple of pounds, and definitely fewer than 18.4, we have a probably injured bird. The photo sort of tells the whole story in itself, but I'll fill in the details. When Nick and I had gone out for dinner earlier, there was a seriously chubbed-out pigeon-type character sitting in our courtyard. He was, in fact, so plump that I thought upon first glance that he had no head, when, really, he just had no neck. He was behaving in a rather unbirdlike fashion, which is to say that he didn't appear to have a 3-trillion-beats-per-minute heartrate and wasn't moving, and thus seemed as though he might be sick or injured.

Fast forward a few hours. I took the dogs out for their night walk, and as I sometimes do, let them off leash when we got back into the courtyard. Only too late did I notice that the bird was still there, after either just Graham or both he and Winnie had pounced--I'm not sure which because, like most public-space lighting in France, the light in the courtyard is on a timer and soon went out, leaving me in the dark with two small dogs and some short-lived flappy scuffling sounds. The bird's protests soon went silent, and when I got the light to go back on, Graham had it in his mouth. The bird, not the light. He looked at me, ready to head upstairs, as though there weren't a splay-winged, feathered creature locked between his jaws. I tried the old "leave it," which, on a good day, works with a bit of baguette he might scavenge in the street, but a whole bird? Forget it.

I yelled up for Nick, who heard me through the closed window (blast you, broken interphone) and came down with a rawhide bone, previously just about Graham's favorite thing ever. But that was B.B. (Before Bird), and this was a whole new ballgame. We had learned in long-ago puppy kindergarten class that in order to get your dog to drop something he has in his mouth, you just swap it out for something of higher value. He has a toy? Trade it out for a piece of cheese. Sadly, we were fresh out of live deer, and so what was our option? In fact, Graham was very interested in the bone, stared at us wide-eyed, wagged his tail, sat politely for his special treat, even ran after the bone when we threw it, but seemed to be missing that there was something in the way of his chewing on it. Something that, as we now saw all too well, did have a neck after all. Nick, in a feat of bravery (or maybe just imperviousness to yuck) that is way beyond me, grabbed for the bird at one point, but quickly came to his senses and got grossed-out. A guy who was in the courtyard on his cell phone sympathized with our plight, but mostly thought the whole thing was pretty funny. It was. Eventually, after much fruitless cajoling (and while Winnie chowed down on the bone he was ignoring), Graham dropped the bird to have a better look at it and I picked G up, while Nick went upstairs for a plastic bag and disposed of the bird in the common building trash. So, what I'm wondering is:

What would you do to get a dog to drop a yummy, yummy bird?

Question du Jour #19

I've always wondered about this; it happens in some places in the U.S., too:

Why, in a country where you drive on the right, would you escalate on the left?

Question du Jour #18

I know this isn't the greatest picture (and I hope the gentleman in it doesn't mind getting totally famous from appearing on my blog), but it was taken on the sly from across a métro car. I was looking at the crutches. This question has actually lain unanswered for over 15 years--a friend and I discussed it the year I spent in Brittany--and so I present it to you. It seems that French people use for a broken ankle, for instance, the sort of crutches that people use in the U.S. for a longer-term crutched tenure--the kind that fit loosely around the arm, and have a handle in the middle. But for these shorter-term injuries, Americans generally use the loosely triangular kind, with one pad under the armpit and one to grab below. So the question is:

If one of these is better than the other (and I imagine it is, although I don't know which), why doesn't everybody use it?

Question du Jour #17

A couple of my favorite people are pregnant, and at least one of them is having a boy. I've always been very into naming things--I owned three baby name books as a child--and I've been doing a little online browsing. Today's question:

What would lead people to name their son Bear?

Question du Jour #16

Pretty berries, right? No, that's not today's question. We bought these lookers this afternoon on our first visit to the Bastille market on Boulevard Richard Lenoir in the 11th. And they are absolutely ordinary. I was going to ask today where the seller got off selling unremarkable produce at an open-air market, but I think that, more to the point, I should be asking:

What made me think that strawberries had suddenly come into season in mid-October?

Movieing Right Along, Take 1: Setting the Scene

This here on the left is what I have dubbed a "guilt kir." I poured the framboise into my glass, then reached into the fridge, opened a bottle of wine, and didn't realize until after I'd poured, and noticed how dark my kir was, that the wine was red. Dumb mistake. Ordinarily I would have poured it out, but this turned out to have been the only bottle Nick had brought back from Beaujolais from the domaine where he worked the harvest back in September. I had made my kir; now it was time to sleep in it. Or something. And so I did. Not awful, but not generally what I would choose. Bonnie tells me, though, that what I thought was a made-up non-apéritif actually has a name--a "cardinal"--and is the intentional choice of some cocktailians. Ya learn something new.

I like going to the movies. A lot. And by "a lot," I mean that both my enjoyment of the activity and its frequency are on the high end of the spectrum. According to my tally, which is accurate unless I've forgotten one, I've seen 15 movies since arriving in Paris, an average of 2.39 movies a week, considering that, as of today, we've been here 6.29 weeks. But who's counting? I don't know when I became such a movie hound, although years of New York City therapy indicate that I should blame my parents, and in this case, it might even be justified. My folks have been going to Friday-afternoon movies for ages now (movie before dinner means you're less likely to fall asleep, a tendency that seems, to my chagrin, to be genetically dominant), and have gone to Sundance for the last bunch of Januaries (do you pluralize January with an i-e-s?). For most of the year, they've already seen the bulk of the good movies to come out in the theatres. So I come by my cinematic zeal honestly, as they say. I don't know whether it's the comfy seats, the escapism, the un-butter on the popcorn, but whatever the reason, I'm kinda hooked.

Going to the movies here in Paris is funny. Less ha-ha, more stroke-your-chin. Here are some of the reasons:

- For starters, it's pricey. A full-price seat at the nearish-by multi-plex comes in at 10,20 € (they reverse commas and decimal points for numbers here), which Google tells me is $15.22 today--expensive even by inflated Manhattan standards.

- There's no climate control in the theatres. At home, you might go see a movie on a hot summer day to cool off, whereas here, the body heat in the windowless room can reach sweatlodge levels. Who knew I'd be cheering the approach of winter?

- Before most movies, after the previews, there are a boatload of ads. Not every time, but most of the time--also odd. But I have seen some of these ads a good ten times. And by "good," I mean "annoying." Some of the regulars:

1. The Ikea ad where the lady can't believe the low prices and drives away thinking she is the lucky beneficiary of a big mistake, at the end of which a woman's voice whispers "bien plus qu'un marchand de meubles" ("much more than a furniture store"). Loud whispering is super-irritating.
   
2. The ad for some phone company where a guy picks up a stone on the beach and starts talking into it, and the message actually gets to his winsome girlfriend like this is normal.
3. Usually two ads for ice cream or some sort of ice cream novelty, often incorporating semi-erotic imagery, with the fine-print message at the bottom reminding you to eat fruits and vegetables, exercise, and avoid a diet that is too sugary, salty or fatty, pointing you toward the website mangerbouger.fr (EatMove). I checked the site out and think it's kind of dynamite (much more fun than this one), but it is all in French, and so might pose some comprehension difficulties for my non-Francophone readers. In fact, if it doesn't, that would be pretty weird, wouldn't it? But I digress.
4. A protracted colonialist-looking ad featuring a South-Asian girl following a decked-out Nicole Kidman around, goo-goo-eyed, before NK catches some dude's gaze and absconds behind closed doors, unzipping the back of her dress, to drink some Schweppes citrus soda and say to us naughty-minded viewers (in English, with a French subtitle): "Hey, what did you expect?"
5. Two ads, with one or two others in between, for the special MTV cell phone service package with provider SFR. A bunch of teenagers gallivant around on a grassy hill, and then shake up a dorky-kids' party.

- Individual screening rooms (that is, Salle 3, not the whole UGC Montparnasse) only open up just before the movie starts, which goes against my every Type-A synapse. What about the prime-seating worm for the early bird? Hrmph. And, in fact, if you arrive even at the time that the movie is advertised as beginning, you are penalized by having to sit through those alllll those ads.

"15 movies?!" you say? "Do tell!" In fact, in the time it has taken me to write this, that number has become 16. Stay tuned for Take 2 and my spoiler-free reviews.

Question du Jour #15

We got this tube at our local pharmacy, and you're supposed to massage its contents into sore muscles. The warning, "Tenir hors de la portée et de la vue des enfants," means "Keep out of reach and sight of children." So today's question is:

What do you reckon happens to a child--or, at the very least, a French child--upon catching sight of this cream?

Question du Jour #14

The only excuse I can offer for this photo is that I took it of myself at a stop light, while on bikeback. I only hope its low quality and attractiveness don't burn your eyes. Speaking of which...here's today's question:

Why is it that, when I'm riding a bike and there's wind blowing in my eyes, I cry (tear) out of my right eye only?

Question du Jour #13

A friend and I did some window shopping today at the many pet shops near the Pont Neuf. Prices were universally high, but this one above kind of blew my mind. 3660 € for a mini fawn-colored Chihuahua--that's $5430.34, according to Google's latest rate of conversion.


This is the blond(e) in question--cute, to be sure, but upwards of $5000?? That's got to be over $1000 a pound--even when full-grown. You could get nearly three Ritz Side Cars at that price! So the question is this:

If you bought a dog for 3660 €, what would it have to do to earn its keep?

Question du Jour #12

If you look carefully at the photo above, you'll notice there's a little buggie floating in the glass of wine. Don't see it? Maybe this one below will make it easier.



Little guy up toward the top. Got it? Okay, good. This fella happened to fly in after the glass had been sitting out on our coffee table for a bit, but I was glad to have the chance to take a picture, as we have had a couple of small-insect-in-beverage incidents at restaurants recently. Once in a carafe of water, and once in a glass of wine. These are, in my opinion, situations of a different stripe than a friend's finding a larger critter in her onion soup...and then again in the one the waitress brought to replace it. So let's focus on liquids. The bug in the drink, to me, falls into a category of scenarios I have always wanted to discuss outside my own head. Basically, I don't think a tiny, winged beastie in my water or wine is that big a deal. I could fish it out with a spoon and, with little difficulty, forget it was ever there. But doing so feels as though I am letting the restaurant get away with something it shouldn't. If I complain to my server, I feel as though I am being a little difficult (although both guys were most apologetic), but if I don't, I am letting carelessness walk all over me. This brings to mind what I have always thought of as situations with no middle ground. For example, if you hold a door or an elevator for someone, you are considerate, where as if you don't, you are kind of a douche. There is no middle ground there--a choice that makes you a neutral, okay person. Other day-to-day happenings have rung this same bell for me, but they're not coming to mind at the moment. So I guess I want to ask you this:

If you find a harmless little bug in your drink, do you complain or just deal with it?

Question du Jour #11

Here's one for ya, courtesy of today's visit to the Mont St. Michel: Forgetting the rope and the surrounding Spaniards (although I do appreciate the size perspective they offer)...

How big a hamster do you think it would take to get this wheel moving?

Question du Jour #10

One of my pet peeves is being able to clearly hear what other people are listening to on their headphones. But I noticed, when looking at this random stranger's standard-issue Apple earbuds (seen closer-up at right), that there are holes on the non-listener side--that is, facing me--that look like little speaker holes. So my question is:

Why would headphones be designed so as to project sound toward people who don't want to hear it?

Question du Jour #9

Do I owe you a question every day now? Oy, look at the precedent I've set. Well, it's still Friday here, and will be in the U.S. for a few hours more, and so I give you this, suggested by Nick and Donna at dinner tonight (photo not taken by me):

Why do French people wear so much more clothing in the métro (where it's super-warm) than we do?

Extracurriculars, Part II

Why not a kir in a paper cup? Why not a paper cup with balloons on it? Why not a paper cup with balloons on it that was uncommonly expensive, because, unbeknownst to us when we walked into the place, we bought it and seven of its brethren at a store that imports goodies from the U.S. and charges homesick expats or wannabe Frenchies top-euro to buy them. Ah, well. We were having a picnic on the Champ de Mars, facing the Eiffel Tower (see photo to the right), and needed cups for our wine.

This is just going to be a quick update, but I wanted to share the fact that...I got the internship! The lady from Camp Experts decided that, even though my potential absence during some of her salons was a major inconvenience, we were a good match. Hooray! So I'll start there in early January.

In other outside-the-home news, I've spent the last week or so waffling as to whether or not to join the Chorale Pop and Soul after all, just as a way to meet people. I had told the teacher that I wasn't going to be able to do it, because the class I'm going to be taking at the Sorbonne meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5-7, and the Chorale starts at 7 on Wednesdays, not too close by. But she countered that it looked as thought the meeting time was going to be changing to Tuesday nights, and so it was once again a possibility. I was more or less resigned to devoting two hours, two consecutive nights a week to singing, in the name of both working on challenging material and befriending some real Frenchers, until two game-changers came down the pipeline:

1) I started talking to more cool people in my Monday-night chorale.
2) E-mails from the teacher made it look as though Chorale Pop and Soul may not change its rehearsal night after all.

So I'm staying put, at least for this semester, and not spending 350 € on new friends. Something else Nick and I are considering checking out is an organization called Polyglot Club, where people who speak all different languages get together and converse in their non-native tongues. Nick's ears perked up when we saw a story on the group on 100% Mag, a TV news magazine that's on five evenings a week, right after Un Dîner Presque Parfait (A Nearly Perfect Dinner), my favorite French TV show. There's actually a Polyglot Club get-together tonight near the Centre Pompidou, but we'll see whether we make it out of the house. Will keep you posted...

Question du Jour #8

Whenever I see these little pork nubbins at the supermarket, the way they're all crowded together kind of yucks me out. Hence today's question:

What might be a more appealing way to package cocktail franks?

Question du Jour #7

A serious question today, and one to which I am anxious to have your feedback. If I have x amount of money that can live in either my U.S. bank account or my French bank account (and can, obviously, be transferred between the two, for a fee), and if my purchases can be charged on my U.S. American Express card (thus earning me points), my U.S. debit card, or my French debit card, with the AmEx bills' being paid from either of the aforementioned accounts...

What combination of the above is my best bet?

Question du Jour #6

Pictured above are Nick's and my toothbrushes. Mine's the one on the right, sitting in the little white charger. We have two of them, but Nick suggested that we keep just one [charger] in the bathroom and share it, so that we could use our second step-down (or maybe it's step-up) transformer for other American appliances. I had a hard time with this, because I like to have my toothbrush charging at all times when it's not in my mouth. Similarly, I am most at ease when my laptop is plugged-in, and get anxious when Nick wants to use my adapter because his computer is about to switch over to reserve battery power. I think these are two distinct personality types: fearful of scarcity vs. trusting that the plenty will be there when needed and, if I'm being honest, this comes up all the time, not just in the realm of home electronics. So what about you?

Are you a leave-it-charging or a run-down-the-battery-first sort of person?

Question du Jour #5

What, in your estimation, are the odds that a Nick Gorevic would steal the identity of a Nicholas Gorevic (or vice versa) and try to open a cell phone account?

How about if they're both married to the same person?

Question du Jour #4

Pictured above is a short piece of French dental floss. See how it's fuzzy on the lefthand side (you may have to click to zoom in)? This is what happens to it when it is used. I tried both squeezing and wetting a fresh piece to see if that would cause the transformation, since that, as far as I can tell, is what happens to something that passes between one's teeth. But no change. So...what I want to know is:

How and why does something that I would slice cheese with become something I would crochet with?

Question du Jour #3

Kind of mind-blowing, right? Think of all the vet bills we could pay...Okay, so here's the question:

If you were going to pay 1250 € for a cocktail--take this as a given--what would be in it?

Question du Jour #2

I took the photo above when I was at the movies this morning. It's a finger provocatively tracing the edge of a pint or so of Häagen-Dazs, showing how unctuous it is, after a pretty lady has been sitting on the floor, making eyes at said pint. So here's the question:

Does sex really sell ice cream?

Question du Jour #1

What is with French doorknobs in the middle of the door?

Makes absolutely no sense in terms of everything I know about simple machines--levers, fulcroms, and the like. Anyone?

New Feature!

Regular readers of A Year of Kir (that's right, I'm talking to both of you) will have noticed that the consistency of my posting has been a little spotty. Anyone who has ever had class with me--sorry, guys--or met me, for that matter, knows that I ask a lot of questions. And so, in order to reward the former for their fidelity and regale (?) the latter with more of the same, I'm introducing the Question du Jour. The topics will generally relate to France or our life here, or something else entirely. Some questions will have actual answers and others will not, but either way, I want to hear ("hear") your thoughts! So comment early and often. Postulate, set me straight (rhyme!), inventate (okay, poor attempt--but really, just make things up if they're entertaining)...Or don't, and I'll just hang out here and wonder into the void...which is sort of what I've been doing already. Enjoy, and first question soon to come!