23 February 2015: Fangs for the Memories

fangs for the memories

It finally happened: I finally found a French theater piece that delighted me, entertained me, made me laugh, made me gasp and didn't make me pee my pants. (There was an intermission, thank the theater gods.)

It probably comes as no surprise to those who know me that the piece that finally won my heart is a musical, but the fact that a French musical won my heart surprised even me. (I haven't been the biggest fan of French theater while we've been here—check out this post to find out why...)

The piece that has set my heart on fire is none other than "Le Bal des Vampires," a campy rock musical directed by Roman Polanski (yes, that Roman Polanski) based on Polanski's 1967 film of the same name (called "The Fearless Vampire Killers" in the U.S.). As you might imagine, the show is full of blood, outlandish makeup, smoldering looks, mild raunch and a score that blows your hair back. (The music was written by Jim Steinman and Michael Kunze.)

What makes the musical such a riot is that it manages to walk that fine line between ridiculous and realistic (well, as realistic as a musical about an undead vampire capturing a young woman and turning her and her faithful companion into undead vampires at a fabulous undead ball can be). The acting is outsized but not clownish. The costumes are miraculous but functional. The sets are so lavish that Joshua and I leaned over to each other at nearly the same time to say, "They must have so. much. money." And the music. Ah, the music.

One of the ballads that gets many, many reprises in the show made my ears perk up with recognition from the very opening strains. That sounds like—exactly like—no, it is "Total Eclipse of the Heart." With new words. My brain raced with questions: How did they get the rights to rewrite such an iconic rock ballad? Why would they have wanted to incorporate such a well-known piece of music into such a different context? Why this song, when the canon of rock ballads is thick with classics? Were there other repurposed songs in the score that I just hadn't recognized?

By the fourth time the song was being sung—by a cast of incredibly strong and versatile vocalists, I must add—I figured that there had to be more to the story, so I Googled the heck out of the show when I got home. Lo! and behold, composer Jim Steinman not only poached the song, he poached it from the best source I can imagine: himself. He's an American composer and lyricist who's written tons of songs for Meat Loaf, Barry Manilow, Air Supply, Celine Dion...and Bonnie Tyler, famed for her rendition of Steinman's song "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

What I found upon even more digging further enchanted me: Steinman had originally written the song to be a kind of vampire love ballad in the first place. When interviewed about the song's inclusion in the musical, he said, "That was an accident almost. I'm surprised it stayed in. [For the original production] in Vienna, I had only a month and a half to write this whole show and we needed a big love duet...But with Total Eclipse of the Heart, I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was Vampires in Love because I was working on a musical of Nosferatu, the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in dark. And so I figured 'Who's ever going to know; it's Vienna!' And then it was just hard to take it out."

The show is chock-full of other Steinman melodies, if not lyrics (those were done by German writer Kunze, who signed on to turn the Polanksi film into a German-langauge musical in its first incarnation as "Tanz der Vampire," which premiered in Vienna in 1997). Somehow, the fact that the show is based on a foundation of modern rock songs rewritten to fit late-19th-century Eastern Europe makes me love it even more.

For those American musical theater lovers, you may be wondering (as I did) why this weird little bloodthirsty gem hasn't made it stateside yet. Well...it has, but the mounting of the Broadway production was so full of creative cock-ups, actor meltdowns, rewriting nightmares and producing snafus that it only ran for 56 performances before closing on January 25, 2003—becoming one of the "costliest failures in Broadway history," according to The New York Times.

There were no such problems in Paris, however, especially considering Polanski was allowed to direct the show, something he was not allowed to do in America. (Polanksi is nationalized French and was born in Paris, but he's worked all over the world. In 1977, he was arrested in Los Angeles for unlawful sex with a minor and he fled to Europe, where he's worked primarily ever since. If he sets foot on American soil, he'll be required to answer for his crime.) Rocky directorial history aside, the German show was translated into French and premiered here in Paris around Halloween of last year. Because of its smash success, it's still playing—which is how I was able to see it for Valentine's Day four months on.

I plan on seeing the show as many times as my bank account will allow because it's that wonderful rarity of theater: funny, not too deep but not flimsy, well-done, visually and aurally stunning and just generally a bloody good time. It's something you can really sink your teeth into...

10 December 2014: Naked, Screaming, Beer-Soaked Women

NAKED, SCREAMING, BEER-SOAKED WOMEN

or, MY FORAY INTO FRENCH THEATER

It's been nearly two months since I last posted. I'm not proud of it, but it's a fact. I guess I could say that time flies when you're having fun keeping up with the grocery shopping, your freelance deadlines and your grad-school-swamped husband? (It's been stressful, to say the least.)

In reality, the past two months haven't flown by as much as they've jogged by like they're training for a marathon: fast enough, but with so much huffing and puffing that you're not sure why you even signed up for the marathon in the first place.

Amidst this time of stress, however, there's been a respite that I can only describe as not a respite at all, more like a further test of my patience and commitment to staying somewhat sane in the middle of brain-melting boredom and frustration. In short, we've been going to the theater.

French theater was something of a novelty for us when we first got here—we'd attended a few shows when we lived here in 2010, but they were mainly English-language musicals or...actually, no, that's the only thing we saw. So when Joshua had the chance to audit an undergraduate theater course that would involve attending a theatrical performance somewhere in the city practically every week, we eagerly signed up (I was able to get in on the class group rates, which made the opportunity even more attractive).

So we started regularly attending theater at some of the largest, most well-funded public theater institutions in the city—spaces like the Théâtre de la Ville, du Soleil, des Abbesses, d'Amandier Nanterre, de la Colline, de la Bastille, the Odéon and lots more. Companies in the middle of the city, on the outskirts in the suburbs, in beautiful old buildings and new-fangled warehouse spaces—it was a theatrical education of epic proportions that left us with a collective impression of all the theater Paris has to offer. Unfortunately, that impression is overwhelmingly, "Man, this sucks."

Workin' hard for the money at Macbeth

Without fail, each production we attended disappointed, enervated, infuriated or bored both of us to the point of spending each metro ride home venting about the abuse our senses had just endured. Apparently, it's a mark of French theater and their "appreciation of" (read: distaste for) their audiences that allows most shows to run as long as four hours with no intermission. Four hours. NO INTERMISSION. As someone with a bladder, this is not just inconvenient, it's pure torture. As someone with a brain and a sense of time, this is just mind-numbingly rude. And it wasn't just one show here and there that made our asses fall asleep in the chair as we surreptitiously checked our watches and noticed how many patrons had fallen asleep (or, worse, appeared to be just as rapt by hour three as they were at curtain)—it was every. single. show. We saw a production of "Macbeth"—Shakespeare's shortest show—that clocked in at three hours and 45 minutes (albeit with an intermission of a half an hour, but only because they were selling dinner in the lobby). No one needs to see a play that runs three hours and 45 minutes that includes five-minute-long scene changes that the company has added to the script. (I wish I were exaggerating, but literally every scene contained some sort of ground-covering that had to be swept up by cast members feverishly wielding brooms before the next scene of ponderous, self-indulgent "speechifying" could commence.)

Bladder-bending break-free run-times aside, the plays seemed to be daring us to revolt. Daring us to get up and say, "I'm done for now, I could really use a pee." Daring us to admit that we're just not hip enough, educated enough, cultured enough, whatever enough to submit ourselves to such irritating theatrical malfeasance. We sat through one particularly interminable production of a reimagined "My Dinner with Andre" in which a few patrons got up and left at the three-hour mark and the actors yelled at them from the stage. Yelled at them. Told them that it was "almost over, just wait." (Which was in fact a lie, considering an hour later we were still sitting there, listening to them philosophize about love and death while choking on their cigarette smoke and watching them finish the complete meal they'd eaten during the course of the show.) I'm all for immersive, interactive theater, but if someone traps me in a room full of cigarette smoke and food smells and yammers for four hours and then chastises me for finally having enough and quietly leaving the theater, that's not immersive. That's idiotic.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of this hellish actor's nightmare (where the actors are the nightmare) was that the theater has been my happy place since I was a kid. I've been a performer since age 6, I participated in every school production possible, auditioned for extracurricular theater workshops, took singing and dance lessons and finally started doing professional theater at age 15. Theater is my haven, my place where I feel the most "me." So when the chance to go to my happy place every week in my new, adopted country to discover the theatrical culture around me, I was psyched. And every week, after getting angrier and angrier at the ridiculous, badly-done, fully-funded French crap that I was being told was "good" theater in this town, I finally had enough. Or so I thought.

The second-to-last play we attended was by a Spanish woman who had just been invited to perform at the Venice Theatre Festival. Fresh off this acclaimed appearance, she brought the "dance" piece to Paris to perform at one of the biggest national theaters in the city. I got excited in spite of my wariness, choosing to believe that perhaps we were finally going to see something amazing that would make the last three months of schlock worth it. Hope springs eternal. It also apparently springs stupid.

The inspiration for the title...

What we witnessed was a two-and-a-half hour sensory beat-down that included almost all of the male cast members getting completely naked onstage, almost all of the female cast members getting completely naked onstage, simulating rape, screaming like an infant complete with fist-pounding temper tantrum, beating 20 large drums so long and so loud that my head felt like it was going to split open (the cacophony actually made Joshua sick to his stomach), and finally, in what felt like a middle finger to not only the audience but also the stage management crew (who I pitied more and more each passing moment as more and more messy objects were crushed, thrown and broken onstage), the writer and star proceeded to stand center stage and douse herself in beer. A case of beer. Beer that she partially chugged, then tossed over a shoulder, poured down her chest and sprayed around the stage. This is, of course, after removing her underwear and performing some sort of strange Russian bottle dance that flaunted everything her mamá gave her. (Her mamá probably wishes she could take it back now, whoever and wherever she is.)

Needless to say, we left when there was still a full forty minutes left in the show, but our pounding heads just couldn't take any more. I've never been so content to squeeze into a crowded metro car than when I was leaving the naked, screaming, beer-soaked banshee behind (no offense intended to any banshees who may be reading this).

So has this experience turned me off theater for good? Of course not, but it has certainly made me appreciate the performances that I've enjoyed over the years. It's a rare, magical thing to truly enjoy a piece of live theater, especially when you can't help but see the wing and a prayer that it's riding on because you've ridden that same shoddy apparatus every time you yourself have stepped onstage. But I'd rather see the string and duct tape and missed cues and flubbed lines in a piece that doesn't feel like an artistic assault than suffer through a pontificating play that's "good for me" or "high art." You can be speaking Shakespeare's words or reciting Racine, but if it's hour four and I have to pee so badly my eyes are watering, you can keep your cultural superiority and Parisian profundity. 

Personne n'a du temps pour ça. Ain't nobody got time for that.

#

15 October 2014: Say Cheese!

say cheese!

Hi, my name is Jessica and I'm a cheese-aholic.

For those who know me, this probably comes as no surprise. For those who don't (or didn't realize the depth of my addiction), I ask you to take a look at the photo on the right. That is a graphic representation of the selection of cheeses I keep in our refrigerator on a daily basis. No joke. Before I wrote this post, I rifled through the fridge and pulled out every cheese I could find. (Did I mention we have a dorm-sized fridge? You can probably imagine how much of it is taken up by delicious dairy products.)

I wasn't always this cheesy (though my husband insists that's not true—I think he means a different kind of "cheesy"). I had a normal childhood filled with things like cheap cafeteria cheese pizza, mozzarella string cheese, American cheese slices, the occasional wedge of brie if my parents were hosting people for dinner whom they wanted to impress. I was never deprived of cheese, nor was I particularly partial to the stuff. As I got older and could control what I kept stocked in my own apartment refrigerator, I admit that cheese became a more frequent houseguest. Blocks of Colby jack, cheddar, bags of shredded parmesan—moderate amounts of dairy to supplement my otherwise dairy-light existence.

That all changed when I moved to Paris.

Everyone associates "good cheese" with Paris, and to be honest, I thought it was mainly a cliché until I lived here. Surely not everyone dines on brie every night as though it's Kraft slices? Surely the ostensive French obsession with all things cheesy couldn't really be so extensive—just like the French laugh doesn't really sound like the chef from Little Mermaid? Oh, how wrong I was. (About both—seriously, that cartoon was spot-on.)

The cheese aisle of any standard grocery store here in Paris is home to more varieties of cheesy goodness than any other I've had the pleasure to browse. Sheep cheese, goat cheese, cow cheese—these distinctions were never given much thought before I was faced with this plethora of divine ovine- and bovine-sourced dairy options. Not only is there brie, there are tons of different kinds of brie from different regions, each with their own distinctive "bouquet" (trust me, opening our fridge is not always the most pleasant olfactory experience).

I've observed the Parisian grocery customer in its natural habitat and discovered that cheese isn't selected merely for price, or look, or name recognition. Cheeses must be inspected before they're purchased, much like a wine snob—ahem, wine connoisseur—sniffs and swirls a glass before letting it trickle down his throat. Lids are lifted, wedges are sniffed and squeezed. It was only natural that I put these habits to my own use. Every grocery store trip now involves at least five minutes of ponderous cheese inhalation.

To give you a peek into how this addiction runs my life, I give you Exhibits A through G: In our refrigerator at the moment, we have packaged slices of both gouda and mimolette—cheese from distinctly different origins (one is smooth and creamy and Dutch, the other is snappy and cheddar-esque and French) but equally delicious when consumed as a snack or placed on a sandwich. We have a round of Le Rustique brie, which did not just attract me with its little picnic-blanket skirt (seriously, the box is lined with a red-and-white checkered cloth—too cute to pass up), but also with its delightfully pungent and unctuous bouquet. We have a generic herb-and-soft-cheese spread that's like Rondelé but not as expensive (perfect for spreading on a baguette for a sandwich or using as a dip for carrots), a bag of blended cheeses to throw on pasta, a wedge of Tomme Noire (a "rustic" French cheese from the Pyrenees Mountains that is amazingly creamy once you get over the fact that it's surrounded by a thin, black rind) and finally, the pièce de résistance: Cousteron (which my husband refers to as "crunchy cheese"). Cousteron is a mild cow's milk cheese from the Loire region (famed for its wine as well as its dairy) and is housed in a gritty, crunchy rind that takes a little getting used to but eventually makes it feel like the cheese comes with its own cracker. Gross? Only to the uninitiated.

If your mouth isn't watering at this point (or if it is, but because dairy makes you gag), that's okay. I wouldn't wish this affliction on anyone (except myself, because cheese is freakin' delicious). Those who live a dairy-free lifestyle talk about the addictive properties of cheese, that your body responds to the sugars like it would to a drug. I believe that. When I get hungry and the stomach juices are churning, I can't just have any snack—I have to have cheese. My meals aren't complete without cheese (I even get the cheese option at Indian restaurants—the madness!). I think about cheese, I dream about cheese, I shop for cheese, I research cheese...and most importantly, I eat cheese. A lot of it.

I am the cheese, and while this cheese doesn't stand alone (my lactose-intolerant husband is my biggest enabler and co-cheese-spirator), there could definitely be more of us out there. May I interest you in a nice wedge of brie?...Perhaps a slice of gouda?...A mozzarella ball? Eh? Eh?? C'mon, lemme hook you up...

27 September 2014: Corps Values

corps values

A week before we left for Paris, Joshua and I had a routine check-up with our primary care doctor to make sure everything was in working order before we took off overseas. (We have the same doctor and she had us in the room together for the appointment—something she'd never done before but which proved kind of interesting, once we got over how much it made us feel like old people.) At the end of the appointment, she said in all seriousness, "When you get over there, would you please tell me how French people stay so thin? We doctors have been trying to figure that out for years."

After the trite responses of "It must be all the walking" and "Well, they do eat a lot of fresh food," Joshua and I came to the same conclusion about the true way Parisians maintain their enviably sleek corps (bodies): "Smoking."

Cigarette use in Paris is so profound that you can't walk two steps without getting engulfed in secondhand smoke—either from a stinky traditional cigarette or from one of those new-fangled e-cigarettes that science is proving to be even more harmful than "normal" death sticks, thanks to the vapor that allows more malevolent particles to enter the lungs. (I'm not a fan of smoking, in case you couldn't tell. What someone wants to do to their own health is one thing, but I don't wish to share your life choices simply because I walk by. My, my, this soap box is slippery...)

The thing is, I don't remember the smoking being this prevalent the last time I lived here, or the last two times I visited. I remember being overwhelmed as a kid during my first visit, but I gradually got used to the general haze that permeated the atmosphere—to the point that it seemed odd to see people huddled outside bars and restaurants once I returned to California. Now that Paris has its own set of smoking laws that mostly prohibit puffing in public places (restaurants, stores, parks, etc.), maybe I'm encountering the effects of smokers being forced out onto the streets and into my path much more than I did in 1999. But whatever the reason, Paris has really gone up in smoke.

Lighting up certainly seems to be the prime method for maintaining one's Parisian sleek, considering it not only kills your appetite thanks to the stimulating nicotine hit, but also kills your sense of smell—and with it, taste—the more frequently you inhale. The practice also keeps your hands busy (and your body outside) instead of letting you get handsy with a baguette or a brasserie beefsteak.

My other suspicion is that French people (men and women) just don't eat all that much. A proponent of this theory, Mireille Guiliano, even published a book in 2004 called French Women Don't Get Fat, and it was a veritable Bible of how to eat like a French person—small amounts of quality ingredients—and still look lean and mean in your Dior trousers. Being the impressionable teen I was then, I snapped up the book, only to discover it was basically a reiteration of what had been ingrained in me since childhood: Everything in moderation. Though the age-old adage didn't save me from a bout with anorexia in high school and a subsequent weight gain my first year of college, I'd like to think that since that time, I've naturally subscribed to the edict of "Give your body what it wants."

But I've noticed something about Parisian women during my daily study of their habits: they do eat. I frequently see slender young women marching down the sidewalk gnawing a baguette sandwich the size of their fashionable handbag. I've even seen willowy business women tucking into hearty brasserie meals of entrée, main dish, side dish, salad and dessert—with a plate of decimated bread and a half-empty wine glass nearby. They drink wine, they eat chocolate, they enjoy bread...so what gives?

Another thing I've noticed is the prevalence of products promising to aid in minceur—weight loss. Every other page in a French magazine or poster in a pharmacie window is an ad for a pill or a liquid or a powder or a cream that promotes rapid weight loss, complete with the striking before-and-after photos I'd only associated with those terrifying Hydroxycut ads in America before now. I've also noticed that the tone of these ads is nothing short of withering: there's an implication that if you stopped to read this, you're already too fat—just buy this [cream, powder, liquid or pill] to regain your "real" (read: thin) beauty.

While America could widely be considered the kingdom of fat shaming—it sure feels like it, if you've ever lived there—we also still manage to be the most obese country in the world (according to the most recent list published by The Lancet Medical Journal). But the difference is that American ads seem to target their audience with an inclusive if not condoning attitude: "Do you want to get in shape and feel amazing? Do you want to look as awesome as this handsome athlete bounding across the screen? Then get off the couch, call this number and let's DO THIS!"

The French tactic, on the other hand, is decidedly more subtle, but somehow more cutting. There's a disdain to the language in magazines when discussing weight loss, as if to say, "If being skinnier is not on your list of priorities, don't even bother looking at these clothes. They're not meant for the likes of you."

So imagine growing up in a culture that is simultaneously exultant about how delicious [insert animal body part here] is when prepared in a [insert complex food form here] and yet reminds you on a daily basis that you're worthless if you're not thin and impossibly tan—though God forbid you ever show an ounce of effort lest you spoil that chic cloak of mystery that's draped casually on your narrow, bronzed shoulders.

With that kind of constant pressure, who wouldn't want a cigarette?

And then I stumbled upon something truly funny in a bookstore in the chi-chi-est shopping mall in Paris, Le Bon Marché. There, amid the novels from abroad and the thick fashion books that are heavier than the models inside was this little tome, entitled: Sushi Slim, ou Comment Garder La Ligne à la Japonaise. (Rough translation: Sushi Slim, or How to Maintain the Line of the Japanese Woman.) 

Apparently, the Americans look to the French for lessons in thinness, and the French look to...the Japanese.

Which just seems to prove that no one really has the secret to lifelong litheness, no matter where they're from. Whether it's cigarettes, fresh food, lots of bread, lots of walking—or lots of sushi—we're all just muddling through the best we can. 

I hope my doctor isn't too disappointed.

28 August 2014: (Way) More than Skin Deep

(way) more than skin deep

Warning: if you are a person who finds talk of skincare soul-crushingly boring (or who has never counted the number of blackheads on their noses—not that I'm speaking from experience), this post might send you into a mind-numbing spiral.

If, however, you are someone who's curious about the massive amounts of French skincare that's stocked just steps away in every pharmacie you enter, then this post is definitely for you.

I'll start with a brief history of my descent into product junkie-ism. When we were living here in Paris in 2010, there were many gray, stormy days where we couldn't brave the icy streets for fear of slip 'n' sliding our way to a shattered patella, so we spent days on end inside our tiny studio apartment doing indoor activities. (Get your minds out of the gutter.) These activities included reading, writing, drawing, cooking, singing (I was rehearing for a show back in Sacramento that would start up the month after we returned) and staring out the window at the bleak but beautiful rooftops from our tenth-floor aerie. Then I discovered YouTube.

While I was already familiar with the internet video site for its compilations of silly cats and human fails (I laugh like a loon at slapstick, painful comedy—there might be something wrong with me), I happened to stumble upon a YouTube niche of beauty tutorials when I searched "stage makeup" on a whim. Cue the angelic voices and shaft of light: I was in Heaven.

Four years on, I'm a devoted viewer of at least 10 or more YouTube "beauty gurus," who mostly eschew the guru title but who really have it down in the makeup-application and skincare-testing arenas. This latter category is how I came to be a frequent visitor (I would go so far as to say "stalker") of the French pharmacies that dot this city with their shining green crosses like the glowing green light at the end of Daisy's dock. (Yes, that was a shameful literary allusion. My English degree has to count for something, right?)

The thing that moving to Paris has taught me is that not only do the French love skincare more than most else (except maybe their dogs...and wine), but also that they must use something magical on their faces—almost every woman has good skin despite the massive amounts of smoking, drinking and (as mentioned in a previous post) strategic dehydration.

If you take a gander at the aisles and aisles of products crammed into the tiny pharmacies that pop up every two meters on the street, you'll probably generate some assumptions about French females. One is that they love to be bronzed. Not tan, "bronzed." There's a plethora of products that promise to add a touch of soleil to your skin—despite Northern Europe's decidedly un-sunny climate. You can apply fake tanning solution in a mousse, in an oil, in a spray—pretty much any way you'd like to achieve that particular orange-y brown look that screams "sunless tanner" more than "sunshine."

The other trend you'll notice is that almost every brand boasts water from a particular source that is deemed the "best" for your complexion. Evian makes tiny bottles of water to spray on your face (no joke). Avène adds "thermal spring water" into almost all of its products, as does La Roche Posay. You'd think Paris was surrounded by gushing mineral geysers rather than split by a filthy river and an even filthier canal.

The last thing that the walls and walls of gleaming cool-colored bottles will tell you (every brand seems dominated by spa-like colors: blue and white, green and white, pink and white, etc.) is that no matter what condition your skin is in, you will be able to find a customized product made exactly for your face. (I'm kind of surprised the bottles don't come inscribed with one's name.) Dry skin? There are about twenty different face washes and twice as many creams that can help. Dry skin with blemishes? Same. Acne-prone young skin? There's a cream for that. Acne-prone aging skin? There's a toner for that. It's no wonder that my husband wanders into the book section of our local Monoprix when I disappear into the skincare. It's like quicksand: once I'm in, I can't get out until Joshua hands me one end of a large branch and pulls me to safety.

Seeing as how I went from a soap-and-water kind of gal to a "I might as well try every face mask from this brand, since they all do different things" kind of junkie, I'm consistently surprised by my own interest, but it never wanes. It's like the siren call of skincare: if you try just one more product—find that perfect bottle of goo—you will have good skin forever. Or at least until you decide to try that new moisturizer.

The French are also frighteningly good at marketing to facial fanatics like myself. None of these American "teen splashes water on her cheeks and remarkably looks like she has a full face of makeup on" ads (you're not fooling anyone, Neutrogena). French ads are sensual, classy, featuring impeccably-dressed, beautifully-coiffed women who take almost the entire 30 seconds of airtime to massage a lotion into their stunningly bronzed skin. By the time that half-a-minute is up, you need that cream. Never mind that you can tell she's also wearing one of those afore-mentioned faux tans—who wouldn't want to look that classy rubbing on lotion?

Because of this marketing malarky (and because I live within walking distance of at least fourteen pharmacies, each with slightly different stock), my skincare "collection" has grown since we moved here from a couple of bottles and pots to an actual arsenal that takes up our tiny counter as well as precious real estate under the sink. Does my skin look any better? I'd like to think so. (There really must be something to that thermal spring water.) And when I get tired of my current routine, I can always go shopping...

21 August 2014: Uh Oh...It's Août!

uh oh...it's août!

A wise woman once said, "During the summer in Paris, you ask for cigarettes in English, and in French the rest of the year." (That wise woman happens to be Joshua's cousin Elizabeth, who lived in Paris for five years.)

Guidebooks warn you that Parisians flee the city in August (or août) and travel to more temperate climes to escape the sticky city heat. Shops shut down for the entire month, and the city is overrun with foreign tourists who clog the streets and stores with their awkward backpacks and wide-eyed awe. (The guidebooks don't usually add that last part, considering they're catering to those very tourists.)

Having moved to Paris at the beginning of July and seeing the massive shift in the cityscape with my very own eyes, I can confirm that the guidebooks have it right—it's frightening. I can remember the day at the beginning of August when Joshua and I set out for a walk around the Champ de Mars (the park surrounding the Eiffel Tower) and I suddenly noticed that not a single person around us was speaking French. English, yes. Spanish, yes. Cantonese, Japanese, German, Dutch, Arabic, yes. But no French. Rien.

The visual landscape had also changed. Instead of intimidatingly stylish waifs traipsing through the streets in entirely non-sensible shoes—and yet looking like they'd never broken a sweat or a nail in their glamorous lives—there was an overabundance of sensible running shoes, khaki shorts, ball caps and the aforementioned backpacks.

I like to think that I don't stick out as a tourist when I wander around, but the truth is, I'm probably wearing or doing about fifty different things that mark me out as "non-native." I get self-conscious if I wear comfortable shoes—which I bought right here in Paris—or any clothes with even a hint of Spandex in them. (Farewell, comfy yoga pants.) But it seems that the folks who visit Paris during the tourist high season are not only unconcerned with looking tourist-y, they in fact relish the role and dress the part from top to toe.

The outfit of choice seems to be the following: a hat of some kind with either a bill or a brim (bonus points for carrying an umbrella on a sunny day); Ray Ban sunglasses (no joke: EVERYONE wears these, which explains why the Ray Ban counter at the shopping center is like a scene from Lord of the Flies); casual cotton T-shirt or gauzy button-down (men or women); utilitarian shorts in khaki or a bright-colored cotton or skinny jeans that look like they're transforming the wearer's internal organs to a paste; chunky athletic sneakers or flat sandals. Accessories include: large backpack with which to hit unsuspecting passersby as you back into oncoming traffic on the sidewalk to get the perfect picture; giant multi-lens camera hanging around the neck; unfolded map held up to the nose; an assortment of shopping bags that signal to the casual onlooker that you have dropped a lot of money in the past four hours and that your arms apparently never get tired of schlepping. (Maybe it's all that effort you're saving by toting everything you own in that ginormous backpack.)

The funniest part about this vision of top-to-toe tourism is that the outfit remains consistent throughout cultures, ages and language groups. Sure, you have the occasional perfectly dressed tourist turned out in their finest designer duds to walk the gravel path around the Tower (I definitely saw a woman pushing a stroller in high-heeled mules that would have looked more at home in a red-light district) or the traditionally-garbed visitors from the Middle East. But for the most part, every single tourist is decked out in as close to a uniform of comfort and consumerism as possible.

And then there's the spatial awareness. As I mentioned before, backpack wearers seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they're an extra two feet deep or wide when they try to squeeze down grocery store aisles or whip around in a crowd—it's especially odd to see said backpack being worn on the front of the body, like a kind of unwieldy pregnant belly, as though that will make the wearer less obtrusive and less accessible to criminals (neither of which are true). Tourists also seem to have left their ability to empathize with their fellow human beings at home—never have I almost been tripped, crushed, whacked, smacked and trampled on more than when I'm trying to navigate the narrow sidewalks and pathways around a group of tourists. Which are everywhere. Like an infestation of fire ants.

As for the guidebooks' warnings that the city shuts down in August, it most certainly takes on an air of quiet that makes me anxious for rentrée (the start of school and return to normal work schedules). The building across from us boasts one set of shuttered windows after another, making the structure look like dozens of wooden-lidded eyes on the face of a sleeping monster. The restaurant on the corner closed up at the beginning of the month and it, like many others in the neighborhood, is undergoing a massive repainting and remodeling while its owners vacation somewhere delightful.

That's why August actually strikes me as a lovely idea in a busy metropolis like Paris. The shops that are shuttered all have little hand-lettered signs in the windows addressed to their "Chers clients" ("Dear clients") letting everyone know when the owners intend to return from their vacation. Each sign is a reminder to me not that the city is closed down, but that France holds an appreciation for relaxation and rejuvenation in its very governmental structure, where families are encouraged to take time off and be together before coming back to work refreshed and renewed. That's the benefit of having so many independently-owned shops, isn't it? That each individual shop owner is a real person with real needs—one of those being to take some time to just chill.

But it might strike one as odd that shopkeepers would choose to shut down during such an influx of new customers. Suddenly your run-of-the-mill pharmacy is an exotic oasis of products that will have a line out the door full of tourists (or, ahem, recent Paris transplants) who can't wait to get their hands on your merchandise. Why wouldn't you want to stay and rake in all that foreign dough?

One look at those marauding gaggles of backpacks, though, and I suddenly understand why.

18 August 2014: To Pee or Not to Pee

to pee or not to pee

True story.

This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me (and if you don't know me, prepare for TMI): I have to pee a lot. Like, a lot. Like, I've probably spent more time in bathrooms than I have in bed during my lifetime.

I'd like to believe this is because I drink so much water—which I do—but the truth is that I've been a frequent pee-er since I was a kid. My aunt actually suggested that my mom have me tested for diabetes when I was a toddler since I always seemed to have to go to the bathroom. Thankfully, I don't have diabetes, just very healthy kidneys.

My husband suggested I call this blog, "Big Dreams, Tiny Bathrooms," which should tell you where I'm going with this. Moving to a big city like New York or Paris is as exciting as it sounds, but never more so than when you're playing potty roulette.

It seems that the bigger the city, the more inaccessible its toilets. In places like Sacramento and its surrounding suburbs, there's a plethora of big-name, big-box stores like Target, TJ Maxx, Safeway, Rite Aid, etc. that have large, multi-stall bathrooms to use at will and practically anonymously, which is like a free-for-all for frequent urinators like myself. But as soon as you start getting into a more urban, densely populated area, the bathrooms seem to disappear.

Living in a large city where it takes a long time to commute on foot or on public transport means that once you leave the safety of your home throne, you can be out for hours without immediate access to a clean, available toilet. Take New York: I lived at least 45 minutes away by subway from all of my activities, which meant that once I left our tiny studio apartment, I was subject to the vagaries of semi-public, never-clean and impossible-to-access-unless-you-buy-a-sandwich bathrooms that made me yearn for the privacy of my little pee palace farther up the island.

Due to the lack of public restrooms in a city overrun by people, I can understand why businesses plaster their windows with "Restrooms for Customers Only" or employ the ever-so-frustrating key or code combo. I understand that business owners are trying to keep "undesirable" people from using their bathrooms (whether for voiding or for grooming), but where else are we supposed to go? The public bathrooms in the parks are atrocious and often locked, and unless you sit down to a meal at an expensive restaurant, you're apparently not fit to use a toilet that looks like someone may have cleaned it sometime during the last century.

Then take Paris: a whole new level of bladder-baiting. Because there are very few large stores, there's no anonymous Target toilet to duck into. Even in the large shopping centers, the bathrooms are out of the way, rarely cleaned and often COST MONEY. Yes. If you need to pee (or, heaven help you, anything else), you have to scrounge up 50 cents for a chance to squat above a toilet that thousands before you have barely even aimed at. The train stations fare no better, the metro stations have no public restroom access (makes me wonder where the employees pee, or if they just employ bladder-less robots) and the restaurants that do have bathrooms have them tucked away underground (literally) and you better hope they have toilet paper. I've never been so thankful for purse-sized tissue packs in my life.

So why this decidedly hostile excretory environment? A grad school colleague of Joshua's described it perfectly: "It's strategic dehydration." Apparently, the French have it down to a science. They have a cup of coffee in the morning to clean everything out, they drink no water all day, then they sip some of wine when they get home to make up for the hours upon hours of thirst. Thus, they rarely—if ever—have to brave the lavatory land mines that populate Paris.

On a recent excursion to London, we found that the English are equally stingy with their stalls. Once we left the comforts of our comically tiny hotel bathroom, we were subject to the vagaries of big-city bathrooms once again. With the sooty city air making it nigh impossible not to guzzle water at an alarming rate, we found ourselves staking out Starbucks bathrooms like stranded desert nomads seeking a wellspring—only to find said wellspring covered in all sorts of mystery liquids, discarded paper products and other assorted odds and ends, then to have someone knock on the door four times to remind us that it was a single bathroom in a coffeehouse full of clearly not-strategically-dehydrated Londoners.

European toilets themselves also deserve a mention here. Never have I encountered so many different bowls, handles, instructions and sounds to accomplish roughly the same task (and you better believe that after my years of urinary desperation, I'm a toilet connoisseuse). Parisian toilets are very deep with very little water in the bowl so as to conserve resources, with specific buttons to press for liquid-only waste and all other waste (the latter is always a bigger button, which both makes sense and makes me laugh). According to plumbing websites—we recently had our water shut off unannounced, which sent me scrambling to Google—the French have particularly superior pipe works and plumbing systems, making them the envy of the water-pressure-challenged Brits. I saw this first-hand when the London hotel toilet could barely handle a light load and seemed to give up partway through out of principle, which may have been meant to save water but only led to frantic multiple flushes. (I told you this post would be TMI.)

By far the strangest toilet I've ever encountered was in Lannemezan, a tiny French town near the Pyrenees Mountains where we stayed briefly in between a teaching job and moving to Paris the last time, in 2010. The toilet had an electric shredder built into the bowl—announced with a warning label in multiple languages (to the left)—to dispose of paper before it joined the sewer system, presumably to keep everything running smoothly. Whenever we flushed, it sounded like someone was carving meat in our bathroom. Needless to say, we were very careful with our appendages and accessories during that stay.

So does this sordid tale of pee and punishment have a happy ending? Did we succumb to the strategies of our fellow Parisians and relegate ourselves to a single cup of coffee in the morning, a dry day and a relieved reunion with our own bathroom come nightfall?

Well, as I'm writing this, I'm having an afternoon cup of coffee with a large glass of water, I had a full glass of iced tea with lunch and I definitely don't plan on slowing down before we go out this evening. I also saw an ad on a fashion website for a device called GoGirl that lets you stand up to pee. I seriously considered buying it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pee.

8 August 2014: Introducing...Rainy Day Moose!

introducing...

rainy day moose!

For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you've probably noticed a particular yellow-rain-coat-clad travel companion who pops up in some of my pictures. For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, you'll find his mugshot to the right.

I figured he deserved a formal introduction, considering he's been with me now for longer than I can remember. I present to you: Rainy Day Moose.

Rainy Day Moose came into my life many years ago during a shopping trip to a Sacramento gift boutique on 24th and K Streets called Mixed Bag. Mixed Bag is just what it sounds like: a mishmash of gift items, some gimmicky, some seasonal, some edible, and mostly all kitschy (in the best way possible). Rainy Day Moose was part of a line of tiny toy stuffed bears in various garb, but here was "Rainy Day Moose," as he was identified on his tag—definitely not a bear, and in the cutest yellow slicker I'd ever seen.

Rainy Day Moose and yours truly.

If you look closely under his raincoat (though I'm sure he hates it when I do that—and those photos would most certainly be NSFW), he has the same body as those stuffed bears: bear paws, bear belly, even a tiny bear tail. But then there are those antlers and that moose schnoz (for those of you non-Yiddish speakers, that's a nose). Rainy Day Moose had to come home with me.

Through the years, Rainy Day Moose has held a very special spot in my car(s), in the little divot by the gear shift that mostly collects trash, but he doesn't mind. He's kind of my good luck charm—I like to think that he gets me particularly good parking spots, or helps ward off stupid drivers. (Couldn't we all use a charm like that?) He's also become somewhat of a tiny moose-lebrity to my close friends who visit him often. (Kelly and Ann, I'm talkin' to you.)

Naturally, when I moved back to Paris, Rainy Day Moose had to come along and have a Francophone adventure of his very own. I try to tote him with me every day so he can see the sights and pose for tourist-y photos—which mostly end up being blurry close-ups of his furry schnoz in front of a variety of monuments.

So now that you've been formally introduced, I hope you enjoy this brief chronicle of Rainy Day Moose's travels thus far. The Moose is on the loose!

Rainy Day Moose sets off on his Parisian adventure.

The Moose has landed!

The view from Rainy Day Moose's new digs.

First up: see the sights!

A little shopping never hurt anyone...

Rainy Day Moose roots for Argentina at the World Cup.

Rainy Day Moose visits the Senate building in the Luxembourg Garden. 

Rainy Day Moose at the scene of the crime: where Dad proposed to Mom!

Rainy Day Moose found a tiny moose-sized Panthéon!

Rainy Day Moose watches the end of the Tour de France.

4 August 2014: Pardon

Pardon

So many people...Such narrow sidewalks...

"Pardon."
"Pardon."
"Pardon."
"PARDON."

Four times, and the girl on the sidewalk still hadn't moved. She hadn't even looked up from her phone to acknowledge my presence, and my repeated and increasingly loud pleas did nothing to break her oblivion, nor did the sight of my bulging grocery caddy teetering on the curb to edge around her as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk make her scoot even an inch to one side to let me pass. She didn't even flinch.

Now, I am not a small person. At 5-foot-9 and significantly more solid than most of these rail-thin French people—seriously, where do all those baguettes go?—I'm not exactly easy to ignore. But I find that my personal space is constantly being violated by pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds here in Paris. I might as well be wearing a sign that says, "Please, aggressively walk toward me so fast that I have no recourse but to dive out of your way and hope that my shoulder doesn't hit yours when you finally breeze past me." 

I don't think that would all fit on one sign.

Personal space has been an interesting social cue in the big cities I've lived in. Being from California, there's an innate courtesy that imbues our social interactions with a sense of, "You're a human, I'm a human." (Which is not to say there aren't rude Californians, but I'm generalizing in our favor.) When I moved to the metropolis of New York City, where the sidewalks teem with humanity at all hours of the day, it made sense that there would be a lot of jostling and space-sharing and accidental toe stomping. Same with Paris. What's different is the attitude with which disparate cultures share such limited space.

In New York, the number of people who walked straight out of a shop and onto the sidewalk without looking, thereby making it necessary for the pedestrian already on the sidewalk to stop short or dive around them lest a collision occur was mind-boggling. And frustrating, especially for someone—a Californian someone—who spends a lot of brain energy trying to figure out how not to be in the way. Equally egregious were the number of tourists who would stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk to aim a cell phone or camera at a particularly "New York-y" sight, oblivious to the line of people behind them who just had to alter their flight paths so suddenly they nearly spilled all 17 of their Starbucks. But almost always there was a chirped, "Sorry!" or "'Scuse me!" or a quick smile to dispel the tension even after someone had nearly lost an eye to an arrant umbrella spoke.

In Paris, the same thing happens, but there's an added nonchalant aggression that I find fascinating—and frightening. Because Paris is an equally busy metropolis with even narrower streets (tiny smart cars aren't a fad, they're a necessity), body overlap is inevitable. But instead of making room for each other with a nod of the head or the flash of a smile as you pass close enough that you can smell the other person's deodorant (if they're wearing it, of course—more on that in a previous post), there's a competitive glint that overtakes the eyes, a setting of the jaw, a hunch of the shoulders that says, "This sidewalk ain't big enough for the both of us." (I'm sure it sounds better in French.)

And you know what? It isn't. It damn well isn't. But it's especially tight when you (I'm looking at you, hipster couple latched at the waist) don't fall into a single-file line to allow the other—equally harried, equally there—human being coming toward you to pass without crashing into the side of a building or falling into the gutter. I've lost count the number of times that Joshua and I have been walking side by side, having a conversation, and when we spot someone approaching us on the sidewalk up ahead, we instinctively stop talking and one or the other falls behind to allow our fellow pedestrian passage. We do not continue walking as though the other person coming toward us will suddenly vanish into thin air, jump into the street or, better yet, parcour up the building to allow us to continue on our merry way.

We seem to be the only people in this city who think that way.

I've accidentally "held hands" with several people by this point (people who try and pass from behind, which is a particularly irritating study in how to make your fellow primates freak out and think they're being attacked), I've had my wrist cracked by swinging fists, taken several handbags to the gut, nearly chest-bumped a good number of people (or, again considering my height, shoulder-checked them in the face) and encountered countless other forms of physical violation because no one knows how to freakin' share. (Seriously, French preschools, lesson number one. What have you been doing instead? Teaching three-year-olds how to spot the best foie gras?)

But the most remarkable part of all of these encounters is the number of times I don't get hit. In about 85% of the cases (an entirely un-scientific estimate), I see the impending crash, hold my breath...and nothing. I've even tested various attitudes—smiling, not smiling, bowing my head, clenching my jaw—and none of them seem to matter. A person approaches, he/she doesn't move one iota, I hold my ground and continue to walk toward them and at the last possible second a shoulder is moved, a bag is tugged, and we pass without incident.

When I finally start breathing again, I start to wonder: why is it that people here are so reluctant to acknowledge their fellow human being? Would a nod of the head and a slight smile to say, "Hey, I see you, we want the same smidgeon of sidewalk, let's share" really ruin the I'm-so-Parisian-I-don't-care-if-I-get-my-ankle-broken-by-a-fellow-citizen-because-I-refuse-to-look-them-in-the-eye attitude they seem to have so carefully adopted? Would it really muss their perfectly coiffed-not-coiffed hair or smudge their lipstick or hurt their cigarette-drenched soul to show a glimmer of humanity at a moment when you're all but certain to come into contact with a fellow earthling? I have to believe that the answer is no.

Maybe they're all aliens.

Maybe I just miss California.

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