FrenchBenj

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2008-10-12T11:37:00.001-05:00

Jeff Koons at Versailles

2008-09-22T22:22:00.001-05:00

Jeff Koons has a really cool show at the Chateau de Versailles and I got to see it on my last weekend in Paris. The show itself was awesome. His art hanging in the gilded salons looked so brilliant and out of place - the contrast was mucho cool.

Now, the Chateau itself is kind of a waste of time. First of, the whole thing is really just kind of gaudy. And then, this being France, everything is extremely poorly organized. You wait in line for over an hour only to be told the Chateau closes early because of a private party which will shut off the entire thing (incidentally, the party was the official opening of the Koons show). The audioguides had the most inane commentary ever. In the Galerie des Glaces, it said something to the effect "there are 13 windows, 13 big mirrors; back in the day it was used as a main corridor for the Chateau". That's it. WTF? Nothing about the gilded panels, the sculptures, the painted ceiling, etc.

Oh well. If anything the show was cool just to hear people's reactions. "You call that art?!" and "They lost their minds!" were the mottos du jour.

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Sara Hearts Mel

2008-09-22T22:16:00.001-05:00

Most beautiful and fancy wedding last weekend. I drank far too much Champagne, but a fantastic time was had by all. And the blushing bride, of course, was stunning. I think the townspeople thought they had a celebrity wedding going on, considering the crowds that were watching the proceedings inside and outside the church.

You can tell from the party pics that, as the evening progresses, the eyes are less and less focused. For my part, it's amazing I was able to take pictures, as I was so drunk, from what I am told, that I danced around the room I shared with Sarah and Ann, in my underwear, after stashing a bottle of Champagne in the room fridge. Oops, sorry :(

The happy couple is now in the Seychelles. Lucky bitches.

Here are some of the more "arty" pictures I took that weekend...

Paris Is Over

2008-09-22T22:14:00.001-05:00

Well, that's it, after 6 months I am finally back in the States in my beloved Chicago. Yay! But even though Paris is not my favorite place in the world, I will miss a few things:

Free-flowing Champagne
Parisian Men, and their attachment with wearing wide-open shirts to show off their chest hair (although I will be the first to say that it is an acquired taste)
The bread, oh I will miss the bread!
The views from Montmartre
The museums and all the shows I've been to - always something to do!
The stylish people everywhere
The BHV department store, especially the lower level - home improvement and tools; there is nothing they do not have
The confit de canard
Brunch at Hotel Amour, on the terrace
The 12,000-calorie salads from the Gascon in Abbesses
Last but not least, of course, my friends - steppin' out and going into the Princess for a drink or twelve with Ludovic and whoever else happens to be there

London

2008-09-05T15:18:00.002-05:00

I was in London the past two days for work and although it was a short time and I couldn't do the museums there (I love the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery!), I had a blast. The office is on the 21st floor of a tower at Canary Wharf, so the view there was unbelievable, they had Nespresso machines everywhere, and the weather (mostly) cooperated.

I staid at this swanky little place called the Sanderson - and it is brilliant, smashing, major and wicked. The place was designed by Philippe Starck and is all a big study in transparencies and textures. Below are some photos of my room. The bed was amazing!

Now, a few things about London (after 48 hours there, I am fully qualified to make sweeping generalizations):

It is crowded - almost worse than New York!!
The bar scene is kinda awesome - hung out with Chicago friends Cassie and Mike and had a jolly good (drunken) time
People ain't pretty - quite a stark contrast with Paris!
They sure love their CCTV
The Tube was designed by, and for, midgets - if I don't stand in the middle of the car I have to bend my neck
They have the worst beef
The Eurostar is so cool - it's the second or third time I take it and I am still amazed that it's a train that goes under the sea - wtf!

So Much for Abstinence Education

2008-09-01T13:32:00.001-05:00

So Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is preggers. But she's so marrying the baby's daddy. Allow me the proverbial LOL! A teenage mommy in the White House. I wonder how many senior Republicans are right now wishing McCain had just minded his own beeswax and never ran. It'll be interesting to see the backlash if he loses (dear God please make him lose!).

PS: The title of this post was shamelessly ripped from Daily Kos...

Whine Season in France

2008-09-01T13:26:00.001-05:00

August in Paris is woefully underrated. Sure, most stores are closed ("Annual closing from July 28th to August 31st") and there's tourists everywhere, but at least the Parisians are gone. No more traffic, smokers on sidewalks and at cafés, no need to weave through throngs of aloof walkers. September, in contrast, in when everyone comes back and the mood suddenly drops as the French begrudgingly head back to work.

To get a better idea about what la Rentrée means to the French, head to this great piece by Steven Erlanger in the Times. In it, he describes how the French, who are like "eternal children who return to school" view this period of leaving the chaise longue behind et heading back into morose offices. The economy sucks, the government is all over the place, the Russians have started Cold War II - the beach and a glass of Pastis sure sound better! According to the article, two out of three French adults are pessimistic about the future. Add to this the fact that Fall is not particularly interesting in France (the weather sucks, and there are no fun holidays like Halloween* or Thanksgiving), and you get a good idea of why I left Paris in the first place.

Of course when the French are unhappy, they bitch (but without ever offering alternatives - that's the government's job!) Usually this bitching takes the form of protests and strikes and big demonstrations. They call it la Rentrée Sociale. Hundreds of thousands of people head to the streets to demand more and less. More money, less work, naturally. They don't do it during the summer because nobody would be there to see it and besides, they're at the beach themselves. This year is supposed to be low-key, with one tentative date for a Collective Day of Whining on October 7th. No massive rallies or headaches seem forthcoming though. You know something's wrong when even the French don't have the energy to bitch.

*: Halloween was briefly celebrated in France, but was just as quickly discontinued - "too American".

Random Paris

2008-08-31T16:20:00.001-05:00

Went and hit a couple of sights today, since the weather was so amazing (although a tad on the too hot side, which means a Métro smelling even lovelier than usual). Below are some pics from the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution at the Natural History Museum.

Pip Pip Cheerio

2008-08-28T15:43:00.001-05:00

Going to London for a few days next week (anyone know a kick-ass hotel under $350?) and was on the phone with the Eurostar people today. Had the most delightfully British girl on the line.
"And the middle lettah in zat resurvation wos Z as in Zebra, reught?"
"Yea"
"Lovely!"

She was saying lovely so many times I was half-expecting her to offer me some crumpets and tea.

Ah, looking forward to London - Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern!

Iceland Pictures

2008-08-21T16:49:00.002-05:00

Iceland was awesome! Here a bunch of pictures from the trip. They include the Blue Lagoon, which is a semi-artificial hot spring (created by the runoff water from a geothermal plant), a whale-watching trip (Minke whales and white-beaked dolphins), Reykjavik itself, the Gulfoss waterfall, the hot springs and geysers at Geysir, and the Thingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site that's actually the intercontinental rift between the North American tectonic plate and the EurAsian plate (you can walk from Europe to America!).

Aside from the sights, we met really awesome people. On Friday Adam, a coworker of mine who tagged along, had arranged to meet with the team that creates a world-famous video game. He had told me he would contact them to see if we could meet up to which I had said "yeah, right, they're gonna drop everything and meet us just 'cause we're nice". Well, they did :) We had an atrociously expensive dinner and all hit it off so they invited us over to a house party, after which we all went out and got wasted. I do mean wasted, kids. I got home, somehow, at 6AM, after having consumed red wine, white wine, Brennivin schnapps, dessert wine, beers and rum and cokes. I had to stay in bed the whole next day (the giant jacuzzi in the hotel came in handy!), but it was fun nonetheless!

Few things to note about Iceland:

It's cold, even in the Summer
It's fucking gorgeous
People are very nice but don't always speak the best of English, even though they make it look like they do
Everything is atrociously expensive ($9 for a beer at a pub, $20 for a martini at a semi-swanky bar)
Their money is cute - looks like Monopoly money
Their food is nothing to write home about (whale steak? really just a gamey, chewy steak)
They drink - a lot
Their hot water smell like sulfur (comes straight up from the very deep underground where it's heated by lava)
Their cold water tastes like Evian

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Iceland!

2008-08-15T05:40:00.002-05:00

Their language sounds like a turkey trying to speak Russian but it's a gorgeous country!! I'll have a million pictures when I come back!

Market Days 2008

2008-08-11T16:47:00.002-05:00

Meat-o-rama from last weekend's Market Days in Chicago. Lost of booze, lots of boys, lots of friends. Great times!!

[+/-] Much, Much More!

Off to a Great Start!

2008-08-10T12:08:00.002-05:00

First gold medal for Phelps in the 400m IM. Unbelievable. The underwater images are breath-taking (and NBC actually did do a good job with their online videos site). The emotion visible on his face and his Mom's reaction when he won are really moving.

Eeek!

2008-08-04T20:02:00.000-05:00

IE Bug - Fixed

2008-08-02T10:20:00.004-05:00

Scott alerted me to an issue with the web site when you view it in Internet Explorer. The super-clear error message "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site [...] Operation aborted."

Turns out, if you really wanna know, it's a known bug with IE being dumb and stupid (surprise!) and not being able to handle JavaScript DOM injection in not-yet fully loaded elements. Every other browser can handle it, but not IE. Not even IE 7...

Anyway, the problem should be fixed now. Let me know if you still see issues...

Vacation Photos

2008-08-02T09:29:00.004-05:00

Three days at the house, 3 in Porquerolles, 2 in Port Cros, and a return trip via Pampelonne's crazy concentration of giants yachts. We even saw the Fashion TV "yacht", which looked like they had rescued it from a scrapyard in Bangladesh.

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How Fast Is the TGV?

2008-07-29T17:02:00.003-05:00

Riding the TGV last week. Still amazed at how fast and comfortable it is. Of course, we were prob only doing 300km/h... Not as cool as at the max speed the train can achieve, but still...

Back and Tanned

2008-07-28T15:08:00.002-05:00

Hey kids, just got back from a wonderful 10 day vacation in the south of France. Some swimming in the pool, some sleeping, some sailing. I've got 475 pictures to sort through, so it might be a couple of days...

In the meantime, here's a few shots of the boats anchored in front of Pampelonne beach yesterday afternoon, as we were sailing back to my parents' house after 5 days in lovely Porquerolles and Port Cros. Most of these boats now belong to Russian and Arab billionaires, so no stars, and definitely little glamour, but still, it's always fun to see $50M+ boats up close :)

Paris

2008-07-14T09:47:00.002-05:00

This was a photography-type of weekend. Went to the see the Annie Leibowitz show at the Maison Européene de la Photographie, and the Avedon show at the Jeu de Paume. Two of my favorite photogs in one weekend :) After the Avedon show I basically walked around and tried a few things...

Escape

2008-07-14T09:24:00.002-05:00

Saw this ad a while back in the Metro. Thought the contrast between the smelly Metro and the hot guys jumping into the blue was neat...

Happy 4th!!

2008-07-04T02:04:00.003-05:00

My balcony this morning... By the way, do you know how hard it is to procure an American flag in Paris? I wish I was back in the States today, eating hot dogs and drinking beers at the beach. Sigh!

Uh Oh

2008-07-03T17:01:00.002-05:00

My building's elevator, whose reliability was always dubious, finally gave up. My cute rooftop-view apartment in Montmartre therefore just became a 6th-floor walkup at the top of a hill. Oh well, it's good the glutes, I suppose...

Of Airplane Seats, Farts, and Sunrises

2008-06-30T15:12:00.003-05:00

Being stuck in an airplane for 9 hours has its advantages: you can catch up on Dexter's second season on your iPod, and you can ponder air travel's little annoyances and pleasures.

Yay:

Speeding towards the sunrise and all of a sudden realizing a day has passed and you're on another continent
Flying over Greenland
No BlackBerry or cell phone to monitor, no email either
Comfy shoes, eye masks, breath mints
The miles (which are bound to be soon declared null and void by all the airlines so let's redeem those babies while we still can!)

Nay:

The seat on which your ass will sit for the next 9 hours has been sat on for countless hours by countless asses - think about the number of farts that have gone through that foam and you, too, will use a home-brought blanket as a cushion next time; I wonder if I can fashion a sort of mini waterproof mattress pad...
The cunty flight attendants, who are getting bitchier every time, and still insist upon wearing loud heels for the ladies and louder fake-tans for the guys
The dumbasses who think an overhead bin is like a car's rusty trunk, and must be slammed shut every time
The "food" that manages to get worse and worse (how is that even possible?!)
The toilets with their creepy vacuum sucking sound
The CBS crap they force-feed you on "CBS Eye on American"
Kids

Where the Hell Have I Been?!

2008-06-30T14:14:00.006-05:00

Oy, I haven't updated this in 3 weeks? Ouch, sorry guys. You know how it goes: life takes over, travels whisk me somewhere only to return me a jetlagged heap of tiredness, etc. SO, let's recap.

Two weeks ago I went back to Chicago for a wonderful week at home. It started off with Andersonville's Midsommarfest with Josh, a sort of chill Pre-Pride festival with bands and cute shops and Miller beer and lesbians. After that, a few days at the office to earn my keep. Although in that case it was also very nice because in Paris I tend to work (or at least be tethered to my BlackBerry) until midnight, since the US offices are active until then, whereas in the US, at 5PM I'm outta there! I also had a few beers with Scott and Ryan at the wonderful Castaways on North Avenue Beach and, as usual, we couldn't stop gawking at all the hot boys running or rollerblading along the lakefront. The second weekend was a nice bonus, as I was supposed to be on my way back to Paris, but an unscheduled meeting in Chicago on Monday had me change my flight.

Not too many photos from Chicago, but I couldn't not post the giant vagina-esque blow-up thingie...

The flight back to Paris was a bit rough, as I came in on Tuesday morning only to go straight to work. And since I just can't sleep on planes, t'was tough to stay awake, especially around that 3PM time... Good news was I didn't have any meetings or anything that really required brain power. But still, staying awake was kinda torture all day until I could finally, pretty much, pass out as soon as I had crawled home.

Last weekend was family time. On Saturday I went to the Champagne region to see my aunt and her husband. They bought an old water mill that's the coolest shit ever. The property spans several mini-islands created by the diversion canal that was built to get water to the mill. They are now responsible for all those valves and bridges and all sorts of fun things for an geek like me to play with. Best part is, the river there is the Seine, which is kinda fun in a dorky way - though obviously it's kinda small so far upstream from Paris. We also went out for a ride with my Aunt's husband's sporty car (375 h.p. compressor engine!) and drove way, wayyy too fast down small country roads. The kind of acceleration that makes the blood rush to your brain - awesome! On a thankfully unrelated note, I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of cases of Champagne, which is cheaper than water there...

Of course, this means I missed Saturday's Paris' Pride on top of missing Chicago's. Dammit! Pride in Chicago is so fun: drinking with your friends on the street, randomly running into dozens of people you know, getting sunburned, bar-hopping. Le Siiigh! I need to stop this transatlantic life BS.

Now I'am all caught up. I can resume normal activities, and so can you...

Le Trottoir

2008-06-05T12:08:00.002-05:00

If you remember your Physics class from way back when, you'll surely remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics, right? In a nutshell, it says that entropy (or 'heat', 'useless energy', 'chaos') always increases in a closed system. If you blow cigarette smoke in the perfectly still air of an enclosed room, the smoke will dissipate - the molecules spread out to increase chaos as much as possible. In other words:

In an isolated system, a process can occur only if it increases the total entropy [chaos] of the system.

The French, ever the curious minds, subscribe to that one hundred percent, especially when they're walking on the sidewalk.

In New York's Soho neigborhood, sidewalks are narrow and full of people. And yet, somehow, order emerges from the chaos. People spontaneously walk on the right-hand side of the sidewalk, they cross each other like they would on the road, and they don't stop in the middle of "traffic" to light a cigarette, answer the phone, or look at a store's window. In Paris, all these rules fly out the window. If you walk towards someone on the sidewalk in Paris and you're both at the center of the sidewalk, there's an equal chance the person will step to the right or to the left. And a good chance they'll blow a puff of cigarette smoke exactly at the moment you do cross them. When exiting a building here, it is customary to just spring out - and not worry if you're going to step into someone's path.

People often say the French are rude, but I don't think that's accurate. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. A Parisian will step on your toes, block your passage, blow smoke in your face, or bump into you, not because he hates you but because he just can't be bothered to care about you - too much work! A Parisian walking down the street is simply unaware of any other person on that street. Maybe they're missing a "civilization" gene - the one that makes you realize there are indeed people around you. So really, they're more aloof than rude. Not the most satisfying of excuses, to be sure...