Sport is waking up at 7 in the morning to play tennis.

… going back to bed at around 12 from sheer exhaustion.

… waking up later and feeling blue enough not to change out of jammies.

… running out the house late because sartorial choices were overwhelming.

… repeated right arm lifting a champagne glass to the lips.

… finger fatigue from rapid SMSing. 

… cheek and mouth pain from multiple kissings.

Last night, while standing outside the Pearl with Steve and his Canadian pals, our conversation was briefly hushed as a very wonderful boy walked past. There was a wave of pauses as he ran the gauntlet of rue Vieille du Temple. Not soon after, a similar rush of silence, followed by “OOOOHHH”s, ran through the same crowd. This time it was for the small lorry carrying all the new Velib bikes. Hard to imagine that granny looking bikes would elicit the same sound of wonder as a very cute boy, but there you have it. Parisians like to goggle over strange objects they can’t/won’t ever use but find admirable in idea.

He was a portly older man, wearing an ill-fitting grey suit and oily greased back hair, with eyes that ressembled a toad. He stood outside the Social Security building chatting with a friend. His eyes followed me as I approached. Drawing near he spoke up.

“I love the young girls from my country.”

This was followed by a hissing sound.

Then he grunted in my general direction, snorting out something that was almost a “hey.” He kept grunting. When this met with no reaction he finally broke down.

“Miss, your ass looks ready to be fucked.”

Now seriously. Does that ever work? Imitating first a snake, then a pig in a rut, and finally just a crude idiot will get you nowhere with the opposite sex. Just thinking these kinds of people actually find people to procreate with, multiplying in their kind, gives me the shivers.

Besides book-making work and boning up for some major discussions on contemporary art, and the usual humdrum dumb job I schmuck around in three days a week, the band has been busy. We’re breaking in a new drummer and there’s three concerts coming up. Two small ones in Paris, one at the Feline (June 1st, 6 rue Victor Letalle 75020), and the other at le cave de Zorba (June 13th, 137 rue faubourg du Temple 75011), plus one in Amsterdam (June 8th, OCCII). Here’s the flyer for the first one. I did the design… if I can pat myself yet again on the back!

And not a creature was stirring, except for these louts

The tv was warming above the chimney all bare

In hopes that St. Nicolas would have a good scare

The children were drunk and sunburnt instead

While visions of white-skirted baguettes danced round their heads…

One can never be sure with French politics whether the evening will end with broken bottles, funny hats, massive screaming, or just several bald men stepping out of line. Our elections night, where, among the voters present Bayrou won hands down, was tarnished by these two baldies, both of which were virulent Sarko supporters. The screaming and tantrum pulling was enough to make me throw two books at their heads (Oh Beckett and Strindberg! You deserve better!). If they represent the right, there’s no hope for intelligent life in this country. The next time I’m going to put an immigration policy on my door: no village idiots allowed.

There was a lot of chanting coming from the window, almost drowning out the voice of Julius Caesar himself. Drawn by suspicions of local uprising, I pulled back the windows and pressed my ear to crack in the window. Punctuated by horns and whistles was some kind of mantra… It sounded like they were saying something about pink. So we decided to creep down and find out where all the bonfires were lit.

B lives near the UMP headquarters so he’s used to the cops. But I’m not. Tonight they’re in a straight line before us, facing something I can’t quite make out behind the plastic shields. Are those people or tentacles? Impossible to breach those stony face automatons so we wander around slip behind the arch. Now we’re on the side of the tentacles, strings of people wandering and huddling, some with wine bottles. Closer in the throng grows thicker. Finally piercing from behind four bespectacles large-scarf wearers, the image becomes clear. It’s a regular sit down.

Bodies are strewn up and down the street, all prone and misshapen. Sometimes heads turn but the sea of people lying down in the street remains quite static. Floating above is a banner, something about flowers, sequins and Sarkozy. Thoughtful and thoughtless, young and middle-aged, all those armed with cameras old and digital are flashing away. I’m almost run over by a floppy fringed blond teenager armed with some old plastic dinky point and shoot. He must be in artschool. Then, everyone stands up and starts chanting again.

I guess it’s kind of a nice protest but it reminds me of some dippy multi-scarved freaks I kept seeing creeping off the plane in Kathmandu, their doe-eyed henna glance hiding a frightening yearning for conformity. The election and its accompanying protests bore me to tears. Makes me yearn for the days of bottle throwing and banlieue bastards.

Today, walking around in the sunny Parisian light on an unusually warm day, I was struck by the flooding on the Seine. In fact, I had noticed the rising height of the Seine from two weeks ago, when a portion of the Right Bank was in danger of being submerged. Today, almost all the banks on Île Saint-Louis, Île de la Cité, and some of the lower sections of the Right and Left Bank were covered, in parts by as much as a foot of water! We could see, from the Pont de Sully, that the water had creeped over the banks so high that some of the garbage bins were in danger of being completely submerged! One old lady was trapped and had to be helped across a bush to get to safety. The water was running very fast and it was brown and murky.

Everyone who noticed this started casting suspicious glances at the budding trees. “Échauffement de planète!” they mumbled ominously. So I turned and asked my walking companion if it was so. He said, “not necessarily. It has been raining a lot of these last few days and it’s normal for the Seine to swell her banks after large rainfalls since she has many tributaries.” But what’s at the root of our incessant rains?

The warm weather was certainly not preventing young couples from smooching left right and centre, and spring fever was in ripe evidence at the famous bookstore I stopped in. Three men were busily chatting up every young anglophone customer in sight. I’ve never heard anyone use Margaret Atwood in a pick up line. What a weird winter we’re having.

There are some things I will never get used to in France.

The husband, practising his english, translated this tidbit from the newspaper today: "A hunter killed a mushroom picker. He was a truck driver and he took a vacation to kill boars. Instead he got a woman. She got a bullet in the abdomen. He just heard a noise in a bush. She suddenly died."

This reminds of the time we were in the middle of a corn maze and all of us had to keep silent because we were recording ambient sound for a film when suddenly two little brown sausage dogs came upon us and starting barking, followed by sound of shots nearby. Sixteen people, who had been keeping stock still, suddenly broke out into angry yelling replete with luscious expletives. I tried to be amused when the sound guy said that usually by this point the hunters are very drunk and can’t shoot straight, but was more comforted by walking around with a orange emergency cone on my head.

September is garage sale time in Paris. They call it les vides-greniers and you can get the official low-down here. All sorts of fun things can be found like gorgeous Italian shoes.

However, Russians flea markets still kick ass all over anything here. Somebody scored me this amazing Russian Leica* (more…)

Standing on the balcony at the Theatre du Chatelet, there is a commanding view of the Seine, the fountain, the overarching justice buildings and the high towers of Notre Dame. It’s a view that is as Parisian as Paris could be, like the view of the Eiffel Tower from the hills of Montmartre, or the view of the Louvre from the Left Bank. It’s a tourist’s wet dream. But it’s not everyday that one can have this view. Though the Theatre is open for several variety shows, access is often forbidden to the top balcony. Still, having the view tonight was the least of all luxuries.

For those who waited around, for those not wasted on acid or other ancillary itchiness, the plush red seats between one and two in the morning was heaven on earth. After midnight, the theatre was evacuated of the techno wastoids while the roadies prepared the stage for Gonzales. The wait for this, the highlight of the Francofffonies soirée, was a good forty-five minutes. But hey, the last time Gonzo played a free concert in Paris for last year’s Nuit Blanche, the wait was a good four hours long.