« So this is Jet Setting | Main | The After Funk »
Paris II
By Administrator | May 24, 2008
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in Paris and I’m sitting cosy in my rented weekend apartment watching French Idol, or “Novelle Star” and laughing. They are down to the final five contestants and aside from not one of them having any talent, they all put on such kitschy, melodramatic performances typic of France that I shake my head and wish I could get the grandiose applause when I do something that corny.
One guy opened his set by lying on the ground, posing like a model for a photographer, cameras zooming in from above. He had a skin-fitting, three piece suit on but no shirt. He got up slowly in choreographed movements and couldn’t stop penetrating the tv camera with his feminine idol eyes (anyone who’s seen idol knows the corny eyes contestants like to give the cameras to generate faux sex appeal). He sang a remake to Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” with a frown the entire time. His voice was maybe a 6 out of 10. At the end of the act, he turned around and walked assertively off stage.
What was worse was that the judges, all of them, praised him for his emotional performance and said that he is the next star of France. They funny thing is that only one of the 5 contestants had a (I would consider) normal and commanding performance, yet he was the only one shunned by the judges. Typical French.
So I’m in Paris for 5 days visiting friends and misbehaving. I came up on Thursday and had a great date with a girl I met on one of my flights back. On Friday my friend, Marshall, and some of his friends from the states arrived. We’re in the middle of the weekend and it’s not so smooth. It started well. We dressed up nice Friday night and went to this cool restaurant called Le Grand Colbert in the theater district that has an eclectic crowd of all people Paris. We walked in (2 guys and 3 girls) and all eyes turned to us. The Maitre D’ seated us and brought us Champagne aperitifs. Famous people regularly frequent this place and it seemed that the restaurant wanted us very badly to be famous. So we all pretended we were someone…I tried to pull off a Baldwin, two of the girls were Elizabeth Shue and Sandra bullock. Fat chance, I know.
We were headed out dancing afterwards but made the mistake of taking separate taxi’s that resulted in the group splitting, mine at a place called Le Queen, which is what it sounds like. I opened my mouth and angered one of the girls with us, which turned my group of three south quickly so I dropped them off, headed home, and received a call shortly after that my buddy and the girl with him were mugged on the way home from their dancing spot.
They were walking on our street and a guy came from behind, grabbed her purse and took off running. Instinctively, my friend took off running after him (in his Texas cowboy boots, none the less) and almost caught up to the guy at the end of the street when a second guy came out of the shadows, stuck his leg out and tripped my friend, who went sliding down the pavement. The two guys got away. They always work in teams. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do, chasing after the guy, but in the moment it’s hard to act otherwise. (I knew an American who was stabbed in Barcelona after chasing a thief for a stolen purse. The guy turned around and poked him in the side.)
Fortunately, pride and credit cards were the only thing lost on this occasion.
Today I woke and went over to the Museum D’orsay, which is full of impressionists, and then treaded around Paris on an open-air bus until the rain caught up to me. The D’orsay may be one of my favorite museums visited. Aside from the great art (the most visually appealing to me), it resides in a beautiful building, once a former train station.
We will see where the night heads. Tomorrow we depart for a day trip to Reims to the champagne region. My time in France is nearing end, I fret, as I’m going to work this summer to recharge the finances before grad school in the fall. I will give more notice on this blog’s future shortly.
Topics: Uncategorized |
