The chicks are TOTALLY going to dig this.

It's become unbearable.

The only thing worse than waiting these 5 days until the election is being in a country where, surprisingly, people are allowed think about other things.

I've become a social pariah at dinner parties; if anyone dare utters 'America' I climb onto my soapbox, start gesticulating wildly and throw out overarching truths about the election. 

"La base américaine est un MYTHE crée par Karl Rove en 2004...!!"

I never realized how much I enjoyed pontificating until approximately August 2008. I mean, how DARE they have an opinion, they CAN'T UNDERSTAND MY PAIN. No non-American (save for maybe, Iraqis and Afghans, and a smattering of other nationalities..) understands the trauma of 2004! 

I don't care if you read the NYTimes MORE often than I do, WERE YOU IN PALM BEACH COUNTY IN 2000? I DIDN'T THINK SO.

I have become a woman obsessed. I compulsively reading every online media source that even vaguely provides information on the outcome.

Blogging about this any more would just feed the cycle of insanity. To distract myself, and you, kind reader, a potpourri of life these days...

1. Oh angst, thy name is some dude named 'Aaron'



Waiting in line for my flight to America the other week, I became aware of this gentleman in front of me. Fat, plumply, large, loud, American and about my age. He's wearing a backpack with HUGE tags from various ski resorts in North America. Now, we all know how I feel about self-glorifying skiiers. This guy already was already creeping up the douchebag scale.

Then, seeing a way to skip the line, picks up his backpack and says to the patiently waiting queue:

"AU VWA, SUCKERS!"

...it was precisely at this moment, when I was silently willing his head to explode that I noticed his HAT. Fresh off some Oktoberfest (totally AwEsOme wOoOo) drinking tour, he felt the need to BUY and WEAR a hat with a Little Plush Beer Stein glued to the side.

Not only that, the Little Plush Beer Stein had a plume attached, representing, of course, beer. On a hat. I never thought one sartorial object could say something so clearly, but apparently this hat CAN say ' I enjoy the fact that I have a beer gut at 21, don't shower, and have the intelligence of a raccoon. Also, I really enjoy Phish and Guster."


2. Where have all the Good Men Gone...?



...they've been processed, canned and sold for 2 euros at a market in Belleville.


3. For Your Moment of Zen, a great moment in the history of American song, brought to you by A.W. and M.K-S, at the Morikami Gardens in Delray Beach...

"French public said to support Obama's exit strategy"

...toward a lasting paix in Iraq.

Putting the "ass" in "canvassing"

As a general rule, I prefer "grumpiness and cynicism" to "hope and ideological motivation."
But the idea of Barack Obama as president makes my Eurosnobbish heart warm over. So, finding myself in South Florida a few precious weeks before the election, I decide to talk to strangers and get heatstroke--for the cause.

I show up to the Obama-Biden headquarters located in the Bermuda Star of David of south Florida: the intersection of Delray Beach and Boca; a half mile from the Kings' Point complex, and East of the everglades.

I'm greeted by a 20-something at the door, cute in a sort of annoyingly motivated sort of way. "WHAT AN ADAWRABLE BOY!" an 80-something volunteer would exclaim later. (I was waiting to hear "I'm gawing to intraduce him ta my granddawtah!" but alas...)

I say I'm willing to canvas, and he shuffles me over to a table with an attractive middle aged woman. I ask where she's from, she says Boston. Originally? Lebanon. I'm immediately excited; start talking about my aborted year in Beirut, etc. Then it occurs to me...

...They're sending a blonde and a Lebanese woman out to canvas in Boca Raton. Boca. Raton.
The 'more pro-Israel-than-Israelis' heartland. The Hilary-or-die democrats. The target of the Great Schlep!

Nevertheless, we pile into my car with Obama buttons and our mail-in ballots, and get assigned to a neighborhood picked at random.

Knocking on the first door, we speak with a nice, young black guy about mail-in voting. We chat, he fills out a mail-in ballot request form.

As we're leaving, my canvassing partner declares in a loud voice:

"WHY THEY SEND US TO BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD, BLACKS ALREADY LIKE OBAMA."

I mumble something about pushing early voting and we keep going. We knock on a couple more doors, everyone is really nice and receptive, and I'm feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about America, racial harmony, and the future of the world as a whole. THEN Faiza offers another piece of wisdom:

"BLACK PEOPLE WHY THEY ALWAYS SO ANGRY?"

"What's that?"

"FOR EXAMPLE THAT BLACK MAN HE LOOK SO angry LOOK AT WAY HE ANSWERED THE DOOR..[continues rambling]..."

"(Silence)....uhhh..."

REALLY, Obama volunteer?! Although tempted to point out the obvious--that we were volunteering for a man who happens to be black, and in fact the old white man is the 'angry' one, I was shocked into silence. I'm willing to accept that I didn't understand the nuance of what she was trying to say, but I think I got the gist of it.

Clearly, her feet are in the right place, but I don't quite buy the "I'm voting for Obama, so I can be as racist as I like." It's worse than the "Some of my best friends are...(black/gay/et al.)" rhetort, which has never held any water, and is even sadder on the eve of this election.

Sad, strange, or just plain depressing, the experience is noteworthy because the first place I have heard pretty openly racist remarks firsthand was....with a volunteer for Obama.

Oh, America.

UPDATE! Well, hello, Gawker, way to reiterate the scary/fascinating phenomenon of Racists for Obama

One million tiny plays about France, #1

(Idea lovingly ripped off from a column in The Guardian)

Two Parisian boys, just returned from August vacation in Manhattan, practice their English, discuss their futures.

Jean-Pierre: Thibault, how are you going?

Thibault: Ugh, I go well, but the research for the work, she makes me shit. 

J.P.: You don't have the chance, you should prepare to the E.N.A. like me. This is the work of the real aristocrats.

Thibault: I find what you do completely undickable. I don't dick any of it. 

J.P.: But why you don't want to become a functionary? Do you want to work more than 35 hours a week?

Thibault: Of course not, but I don't want to work with those shitters. The idea of this makes me shit more than the research for work. Maybe I will to move to London?

J.P.: 'a'a'a'a'a'. And eat their food?

Thibault: This is true. And make love to their women? 

J.P.: There is perhaps something there. They have never had a real lover with 'Ze French Touch'. 

Thibault: I will make my little English take her foot. 

J.P.: Ah yes, she will climb the curtains. 

Thibault: It's decided. I move to London. 

Comment perdre une partie de Monopoly

*How to lose a game of Monopoly

[Disclaimer: this is a posting particularly limited in scope, but I had to post, for the following three reasons:]

Dear CZ,

Je m'excuse d'avance, but seeing as you 'don't remember' the night of that infamous game of Monopoly, I thought I would help you out. Basically, this post is:

1) Vengeance. Back in Spring 2006, I was lead to believe, in particularly convincing French legalese, that I was going to be deported from the country for 'inciting racial hatred against the French' with the contents of this very blog. The author was none other than you, my dear.

2) A Public Service. You think your middle name is "N'a jamais perdu une partie de Monopoly"; within a half hour of losing this very game, you were denying your loss. I know that, being French, you're very adept at rewriting history, but not on my watch.

3)An interesting Study on the results of a French economic law education on Monopoly strategy. I could write a thesis on this, I think. France's finest academic institutions produce some scary results:

First, not landing on any real estate yourself, start to build houses on other people's property, then refuse to pay taxes/improvement fines.

Then, feeling someone getting ahead, you ally with a third player. When this new ally starts to reap those advantages, ally with another player. (5 minutes after allying with me, I haven't forgotten that you called to the other players "LET'S MAKE THE AMERICAN BLEED!")

When your former alliances start losing, pool your resources and take over the lead.

And then....against the odds...die untergang:

Step 1. Complete denial:



Translation:
You know why I've won yet again? (won? we ask)
Because:
1) I PERSEVERED
2) I [sic]
3) I REFLECTED
4) I PERSEVERED

Step 2: Childlike violence

(After being heckled by us on the couch, CZ, you so nobly admit 'It's over because of YOU"..yes, yes, dear we are to blame for your downfall)




Step 3: Actual violence:

..And THAT's why you don't go to Le Queen for Ladies' Night.

A cautionary tale, in pictures. Once upon a time, there was a club, a club that needs no introduction. An unpretentious, cheezy, boombox of sweaty Europeans, fistjabbing the air. (see graphic 1, examples A and B)

Graphic 1:



In our tale, two girls arrive on the Elysian Fields after downing a few mugs of Limoncello.



Embarrassing dancing results. Note: I like to think I was being ironic, and that I didn't actually think this was attractive at the time.

But then, of course, the police crash my party as usual. Or ARE THEY cops? Why, they appear to be...dancing!


...why, even throwing in a little law-enforcing ass wiggle....



And. . . basically. . . All i can think of is:



Combined with a bit of:



...And I can't stop laughing.



...Pretty soon, I'm in complete hysterics. What followed was a very NSFW situation, prompting the following conversation:

"Huh, he's like naked. Like NAKED naked."
"Yeah. Well, except for that towel he's...holding."

Now, I had seen the strippers at Queen before, but thanks to Arrested Development, my enjoyment of the erotic arts is forever tarnished. Le sigh.

(Side note: What about cops is hot? Has anyone seen members of Law Enforcement in America and/or France? Now, the CRS, maybe. Stripping CRS (Riot Police) dudes, that I can imagine. They could incorporate dry ice instead of tear gas into their act; it'd be amazing.)

But, tiring of these shenanigans, we stumble home. Up the 6 flights of stairs, and into bed, to sleep like little drunken babies.


The end.

"Red wine on paint", 2008.

I am as accident-prone and as unable to tolerate wine as a 4 year-old. The only way I even got into kindergarten was sleeping my way in. I won the Best Napper award in Pre-K!

So, I have had bad experiences with red wine in the past. But typically this involves over-ingestion and embarrassing dancing. For example, the night this picture was taken. The look of drunken pain on my face pretty much sums it up:


I inflicted that pain, in vomit form, all over Richard's flat in the 15th arrondissement, and about 12 pairs of shoes. Sorry, guys.

Tonight though, red wine and I had an even more unfortunate encounter.

It had been a bad day. I had to investigate my visa status, and visit the bank. Both involved kowtowing to mean French bureaucrats. Who eat puppies. Lest we forget.

Coming home in a storm, I decide I could use some red wine, pick up the bottle of Bourgeuil, and realise I don't have a corkscrew. And neither does the flat I'm staying in.

Building up steam, I decide to take a small knife, and start jabbing it into the cork.
"This is a bad idea," I think. I keep going.

No, no. I'll ask the neighbors for one. Sure, my next door neighbor tends to fall asleep with the door open, passed out onto his bed (I'm convinced he's a heroin addict, after watching too much Intervention). So, I knock on his door.

"Hi, it's your neighbor!"

"No."

(I pause). "It's your neighbor who lives next door?"

(he pauses, realising you can't deny fact. Although I think he's trying)

He says he doesn't have a corkscrew. What kind of French person DOESN'T HAVE A CORKSCREW. Creepy motherf**** I think, and go back the 1/2 step to my apartment.

I pick up the knife, then go for the carving fork. This seems like an excellent improvement over the paring knife.

So I'm pushing desperately when all of a sudden, the cork gives, and out comes a GEYSER of red wine, all over my face, my Reiss sweater, and, most unfortunately of all, the wall of my friend's flat.

It wasn't just a spill. At least I don't have to re-paint my friend's kitchen for just a measly spill. This was a work to make Pollack jealous. I can't wait until I'm famous. I can just see the interview:

"Well my inspiration really was my frustration. Not merely my own, but society's frustration with its own bureaucratic constraints. What this red wine-on-paint study really represents is the brutal force we have in all of us; the violence of life."

I'm half-laughing, half-crying when I hear a knock on the door. It's my neighbor.

"I found a corkscrew."