a night at the casino

It's true, I'll admit it: every so often, my life turns fabulous for about a night. Lately, these fabulous evenings have been engineered by my cousin N (who is fabulous every day and night of the week). One of them occurred just last night.

You see, as you may or may know, I'm a big fan of Rufus Wainwright. My aforementioned cousin does PR for Mr. W., and got us onto the list for last night's show at the Casino de Paris. We arrived at 7, sauntered to the front of the line, to the guichet marked invités, and informed the young girl behind the glass that we were sur la liste. She shrugged apologetically and told us "the list" was on its way over from the Universal offices and would arrive shortly. We stood aside, feeling a little less fabulous at being made to wait.

Until I noticed a very tall, very effeminate man, positively swathed in some kind of gorgeous fur that was probably once a very adorable fox or mink, that now had giant LV insignia imprinted all over it. There was no doubt who was underneath all that Louis Vuitton: it was the Stylefaxer himself, Vogue's Andre Leon Talley, in the flesh.

I poked Rob and asked in a stage whisper if he read Vogue. He did not. I looked around. No one to share the moment with. (Of all the nights for Coquette to be out the country!) I sighed and contented myself with ogling ALT from afar, relieved I'd worn a style-y kind of ensemble-- brown Isabel Marant skirt, nude fishnets, brown t-strap pumps (total Ferragamo knock-offs)-- I clutched my Prada tote like an overpriced life-preserver and hoped my wool coat didn't scream "Banana Republic" too loudly. Not that there's anything wrong with Banana-- but it falls a measure short of Vuitton, no?

It was then that I realized the diminuitive man in the plastic-framed glasses standing at ALT's elbow was Marc Jacobs, and I really started kvelling. There was also a tall brunette with them, wearing a silver version of ALT's fur stole, who I identified as Camille Miceli, who according to this website is MJ's personal "hand-holder" at Vuitton, attended by a very attractive man in an olive army-style jacket. [NDLR: Attractive man attached to Camille Miceli: if it doesn't work out with her, I'm the cute blond you joked with at the end of the show, email me.]

They got into the show right away; as for us, "the list" showed up an hour late, causing us to miss Rufus's sister Martha's opening set. Major disappointment-- she's a regular feature on my playlists.

When we finally were allowed in, we found ourselves seated in the prime front section of "reserved" seats, where we made friends with Rufus's adorable aunt Teddy and were seated a row behind the Vuitton crew. The show was amazing; Rufus was in top musical form. He, joined by his band, opened with a rocking, fully fleshed out "Oh What a World," and went right into "The One You Love." Listening to "Poses," it occurred to me: he has a voice like a cello.

He played "Little Sister" and dedicated it to our new friend Aunt Teddy; tried to dedicate "I Don't Know What It Is" to Marc Jacobs but forgot the words and had to start over a couple of times. One he got going though... it was symphonic.

A full-band rendition of "The Art Teacher" was less successful, in my opinion--I prefer just Rufus and the piano, as on the album. He performed a couple of new songs-- "Between My Legs" and one called "Leaving for Paris," for which he was joined by--drumroll, please-- Jane Birkin. (If you don't know who she is, you might be more familiar with the bag Hermès named after her). As Rufus began his tribute to Jeff Buckley, the Debussy-esque "Memphis Skyline," some non-English speaking fan who didn't understand Rufus's earnest introduction to the song decided it was a good moment to throw a box of edible panties onstage.

The climax of the evening was "Old Whore's Diet," which led into "Gay Messiah." The whole band donned togas and danced in sync:



Then they crucified Rufus:



Then he came back for the resurrection (that is, the encore) and played "Complainte
de la Butte," "Hallelujah," and "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk."

When the show was over, after I had my moment with Miceli's man, we went backstage, and Rob and Rufus were reunited (they used to hang back in the Montreal days). All the boldfaced names were there; I recognized Jane Birkin's daughter Lou Douillon loitering around, all skinny denim legs and cowboy boots; we drank, chatted with the backup singers, chatted with Rufus, chatted amongst ourselves, and basically felt pretty fab all around, especially having been bisoused by Rufus on our way out.

When we finally stumbled out of there around midnight there was a crowd of dedicated Rufus fans waiting out in the cold, even an hour and a half later, for him to emerge. I happened to be singing "Complainte de la Butte" at the top of my lungs just as we came out of the stage door, but at that point, considering where I had just been, I had nothing to complain about.

Keep those tickets coming, N. And thanks again.

[NOTE: Thanks to Lottie, I now realize why I recognized one of Rufus's backup singers, Joan Wasser!]

newly obsessed with...

Kate Bush's new album, Aerial. After 12 years of semi-retirement, she's just released a double CD full of the kind of haunting, wistful, and delicately balanced compositions that reserved her a firm place in my musical pantheon when I first heard her, back in the early 90s. All day today I've listened to her new album, as the afternoon wore on and the sky grew darker. I left the lights off and let "Sunset" fill my shadowy apartment as I worked on my laptop, its screen only lightsource: a perfect Sunday at home.

thanksgiving, sans turkey

It's a phenomenon that happens a few times a year here in Paris, and it always feels slightly incoherent: having a holiday when the French aren't. Then again, it's odd when they're having a holiday and we Americans shrug our shoulders, glad to have the day off from work, if somewhat annoyed that the local boulangeries are closed.

This past Thursday was my first Thanksgiving in France, and also my first Thanksgiving away from my family. Last year I took a last minute flight back to NY, but this year I was far too busy to get away-- so busy I barely had time to celebrate the holiday, or to phone my family back home. And I was not alone: of the 12 or so people who sat down to Thanksgiving dinner at Joetta and Robert's apartment the other night, almost all of us had been up and running since early that morning and had to work late that evening. I myself had been to Nanterre, to Charles V, and to my therapist before a last-minute trip to Stohrer's in the rue Montorgueil to acquire some sort of baked goods to add to Joetta's already plentiful offerings.



But when we were all arrived, it was phenomenal. We were seated, as if on purpose, by alternating nationality: French, American, French, American, Scottish, French, American (you get the idea). We, the Americans, had come forth to thank the French for welcoming us to their land, for helping us adapt to their harsh clime, mind-numbing bureaucrats and sometimes vicious inhabitants. We brought them our vegetarian cuisine; they brought their cheese and their wine; all was merry and joyful; all drank and became inebriated.

I could make some off-color remark about the French suffering the same fate as the Native Americans, but I'll abstain... in any case, it was an excellent substitute for home, though certainly not as good as the real thing...

rome, if you want to

I like Rome a whole lot. I've been there a bunch of times. It's a cool place to hang out, eat, and get intoxicated. In fact, for these reasons, I like it almost as much as I like Florence, which is a cool place to hang out, eat, and get intoxicated as much on the beauty of the city as on the vino.

I'm a quarter Italian, so maybe it's genetic. Then again, it's not really my cup of Northern European tea; Rome is the closest thing to a third world country I've ever visited and still I like going there. I keep meaning to get back but my plans keep falling through. So it is with a sense of nostalgia that I'm reading Marco Roth's Rome journals in n+1, the self-styled heir to the Partisan Review.

You see, I used to be kind of curious about the world, particularly about Europe and European history, and I wrote similar journal entries on my visits to European cities. Then I moved to one, and I became numbingly blasé about the whole thing. These places are no longer very far away, don't cost much to get to, and consequently threaten to lose a lot of their foreignness. I'm happy, then, that Rome still holds an attraction for me: I know it pretty well, and yet I don't know it at all, I've never spent more than 5 days there at a time. It remains familiar but distant. I'm still susceptible to my own impressions of it. If Paris is my spouse, Rome is one of the lovers I call up from time to time to get away from the old ball and chain.

take back the night (and the day, and the weekends)

I've been making a few changes in my lifestyle recently. I'm not ready yet to blog about some of the bigger decisions, but I am ready to tell you that I have decided that the time has come to ease up on the masochistic poverty-stricken graduate student lifestyle and to try to enjoy myself, the people around me, and the place I live a bit more.

To that end, I had a whirlwind weekend and did barely a scrap of work. Friday night we celebrated Remy's birthday with dinner at "the fondue place with the baby bottles" (Le Refuge des Fondues, and now I need a refuge from the fondue, or at least to get my ass on an exercise bike or something) followed by a drink at a nearby Montmartrois bar, where we fielded questions from the local "aren't we cool and in the know" american tourists who were so proud of themselves for getting off the beaten track ("yes we live here. no we're not studying abroad. we don't know why we're here either. no it's not for a boy," etc.). Then off to Favela Chic, where we met up with everyone's boyfriends (including my new one!), then soon after by my cousin N and the drummer from t.A.T.u., who were breezing through Paris on their way to Amsterdam and South America. The four of us hopped in a sweet black SUV my cousin had waiting for us and we sped back to my place where N took pictures of the moldings to show his mom.

Saturday evening I got a tour of my new boy's hood, Batignolles, a part of the 17th I had never been to before but of which I am now completely enamoured. I also figured out that it is the Square des Batignolles that is so prominently featured in "Les Poupées russes." We got hot chocolate, went grocery shopping, and then got cozy with a magret de canard and a bottle of red.

Woke up on Sunday and had brunch, then over to the Pompidou with Frédérique and Aurélie to see the new Dada exhibit, then down to Odéon to meet Remy for drinks and to see "Elizabethtown." Which sucked: it was overambitious, underwritten, and totally boring save for Oralndo Bloom, who looks better as an Elf, and the mystifying presence of Loudon Wainwright III as Uncle Dale. I was so bored I didn't mind getting up to pee in the middle of it; when I reached the bathroom I found a woman in there puking her brains out and I was actually more interested in helping her than in getting back to the film. That should tell you something.

and there you have it! the play by play, beat by beat, minute to minute update on How Lauren is Improving Her Life. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do that I should have done this weekend...

When the French open a window, they always break a door

This morning I had a triumph at the Service de main d'oeuvre etrangere (that is, the foreign manpower office), where I've been hanging out every Wednesday morning as if the place were a bloody S&M club, waiting for the leather-clad MC to slap me around a bit to punish me for being a very, very bad American girl and leaving my country behind to come live in the land of escargot and inefficiency.

My usual torturer, a middle-aged gent with a fucked-up eyelid was not there this morning; his place was filled by a strapping man with silver hair and a triangle of dark facial hair on his chin.

At last, someone new to deal with, I thought hopefully.

I waited my turn in line with twenty other foreign drones-- the waiting room looked like a stoned-out and depressed version of the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyland-- and listened to the man berate one after another of my peers for neglecting one document, having come to the wrong office, or possessing lazy speech habits ("Ce n'est pas 'ouais,' Madame, mais 'oui'! Parlez français s'il vous plait!"). He sent them all in different directions, to different offices than his; one unlucky bloke was told: "Vous devez allez au Cité Universitaire, Monsieur." The lad in question looked at him with disbelief; we were at Jaures, in the very north of Paris, and Cité U is in the very very south. He might as well have been told to go to Nice.

And then a miracle happened. A tallish woman with frizzy brown hair presented the MC with a bag of croissants. He hooted with disbelief and flourished them before us all. Bitch, we all thought to ourselves. Now we have to fucking bribe these functionaries to process our requests ? it’s not enough that it’s his job to do so, we have to sweeten the deal with pastries ? what are we in, the fucking communist bloc ? I fumed to myself on the inside, smiling my best and most charming smile on the outside.

But miraculously, after the bribe, he began to do his job! One by one, the people in front of me presented themselves and their dossiers; one by one he stamped them, set them aside, and distributed receipts. When my turn came, he busted out in flawless American-accented English, joking with me about New York. I was flabbergasted, and got out of there with a very meek and Dickensian "Thank you, sir."

Julibation! Finally, someone would process my request to work and be paid, after almost a month of this nonsense.

Then I got home and found the heat was broken. Since yesterday afternoon there has been no hot water or heat. I was hoping it would go back on all by itself, but sadly, I am delusional. It's freezing in my apartment and I'm so dirty I can't deal. I called the rental agency: it's not their problem, apparently it says so in the lease. They give me the number of a repair company: they can't come til Wednesday. A week without heat or hot water?? Out of the question. I call another company and negotiate with them for the least inconvenient time for them to come fix it tomorrow. It will cost us an arm and a leg; I will miss my morning of classes, but hopefully not my more important afternoon translation classes. I want to scream. I am freezing and dirty. Thank goodness for a certain dark-eyed frenchman who has offered me the use of his shower...

so you see, really, France is a country that has its, er, ups and downs!

November playlist...

...currently on repeat here.

Dear Stephen Clarke,

I think A Year in the Merde might be the funniest book I've ever read, and I'm only halfway through the first chapter. My stomach hurts from laughing so hard. No one has ever captured those French idiosyncrasies which drive me up the wall like you have. Just having read this far is worth the inflated price of eleven euros I paid at the Red Wheelbarrow. Will you marry me, or at least be my friend and come with me when I have to go to the Préfecture or deal with the Service de traitement or even on my next date with a Frog? Let me know, thanks.

don't that just beat it all...

Well this totally made my day... last week, somewhere in California, a puppy was born green. Inexplicably.

And if you'll forgive me saying so, Baxter is just green with envy (har, har), asking me to dye him up real good for St Patrick's Day. I told him I'd think about it.

...Maybe just his tail!

a proportional response

I just got home from Linguistics, so I'm not in the mood to analyse anything else, not rioters not racism not the French not anything. I would offer simply a couple of questions.

Today, after an ill-conceived visit to a government office to see about a work permit, I slammed my umbrella against a metro turnstile with all of my might, and tears ran down my cheeks from Jaures to Barbes.

If I am a white, blond American girl and I was treated badly enough to make me that angry, can you imagine how badly they would have treated me were I the dark-skinned son of North African immigrants?

and secondly, was I violent because there's something in the air? I'm not usually given to physical expressions of anger, but perhaps I felt, under the ceertain circumstances, a certain permission to lash out like that.

that said, maybe that provides a clue to why the violence is spreading from place to place-- because if the kids in paris are doing it, the kids in strasbourg will feel entitled to do it too...

the story I mentioned...

....just ran on JTA's website.

neither burning nor looting

I thought I should account for my whereabouts, since I've been absent from the blogging scene for about 2 weeks now. For those of you who were concerned for my safety, I thank you and assure you that I'm fine. For those of you who thought I actually might have snapped and joined the nightly bonfires out in the suburbs: very funny, but no. In point of fact I have been very wrapped up in my schoolwork, teaching, and maintaining some semblance of a social life.

Then, somewhere around Sunday night, it occurred to me that I might actually be called upon to account for the riots to the news agency I ostensibly write for-- just at the precise moment when my editor contacted me to ask what the heck was going on here, was Paris burning and worse, were they burning Jews at the stake?

So I've been working steadily on this piece since Sunday night to assure American Jewry that for once the angry Muslim youths are not taking it out on the Jews. But then last night the editor-in-chief left a message on my voicemail to make sure I was getting some good local color and taking my digital camera out with me on these supposed trips out to the banlieux.

Stressed beyond oblivion, I called my mother to vent about this latest demand.

"Who do they think you are, Christiane Amanpour??" she exclaimed indignantly.

I couldn't have put it any better myself. There are some places this graduate student disguised as a foreign correspondant won't go. And that, for the moment, includes anyplace with angry young men setting shit on fire.

That said, I take my leave. I have a story to file.