Les ponts de mai

We decided to escape city life for Bretagne, or Brittany for you English speakers. It’s the eastern pointy coast just under Normandie, (again, Normandy for the Anglophones). The bretonnais get teased for their hillbilly ways, but this aspect of these people fascinated me, much as people from Felton are colored for being banjo playing bible thumping hippies. Quite a combo, I know. Bretagne was one of the only parts of France to retain its native tongue through the Gaulles, the German Occupation, the wavering borders and the wars. Breton looks like a difficult language to learn, filled with lots of letters that look like they got lost and stumbled in drunkenly, like Basque, or, a better analogy, Welsh. Its roots come from the Welsh language, and although I never heard anyone actually speak it, I did see it on road signs. The city of Vannes, for example, becomes Gwened.

The month of May in France has become my favorite month. Les pont de mai, the bridges of May, mean that most of the holidays off were strategically placed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for reasons linked to nothing in particular. Therefore, most companies also give the respective Mondays and Fridays off, and when I say most I mean all. There are THREE four day weekends in May. So Abder, Lisa, Casey and I rented a car and headed west to the coast Wednesday after work, with the rest of France. Once we escaped the traffic, the country roads lent themselves to Truffaut inspired imagery, complete with rolling fields, stone cottages and forgotten villages. Now, Bretagne is known for its rain. I had seen a picture of the house that we were headed towards, and I remember specifically scoffing at the pool. Trump card here. It was hot. We sat in the sun. Outside. Sunglasses. Cold beer. Plus, the house was NOT intended for a group of twenty something interns. More like rich couples, with solitary leather chairs facing floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the sea, fine art, giant bathtubs, fireplace, and, our personal favorite, a big screen TV. We held the couch down and soaked up a bit of Hollywood, made our own buckwheat crepes, then headed out and had oysters in a town celebrating something that called for musicians who chain smoked while they performed and weird regional seafood specialties. I watched kidlets dance in the exceptional sunshine to the band, wine in hand. It was pretty great. Back at the house, I found myself being drawn outside frequently, sat in a lawn chair and listened to the rustling animals and chirping birds be drowned out to the sound of crashing waves. I had forgotten temporarily that I’m not really cut out for hectic city life, so I returned to Paris regenerated.

Triple Threat...for now.

I have this image of my home. Its an eccentric but wise old lady home. I want there to be pieces of furniture dedicated to showing random shit I've collected. I want to have things that kids like to play with, that kinda gross some people out, that people can't guess where it came from. I want things that I had to hunt for, emblematic things, and things that don't mean anything to anybody else but me. I have done pretty damn good so far, in my not so humble opinion of myself. I have a bronze frog pressed with colorful stones that I bought in China. When you go through the intricate and elaborate process of making tea in China, you pour a small amount of each batch over the frog, a “here’s one for my homies” kind of idea. I have a hand embroidered umbrella from Nepal, a Henna stamp of an elephant from India, a mate cup from Argentina, and a kangaroo skull from Australia. There are two things that I refrained from buying because of their obnoxious size and weight, which I know kick myself for not owning. I sat with a man in Jaisalmer, India on the floor of his shop. There were floor-to-ceiling folded blankets of every color. There was a monsoon going on outside, and he invited me in from the rain to have a beedie and a chai. He had one blanket out and was telling me about its story. It came from the desert, and it was made from the dresses of Sunni and Shiite tribe dancers, sewn together to make a large throw. There were tiny mirrors stitched into it, which he said were meant to reflect the fire light when the women danced at night. I didn’t buy it because it was too big, it would have never fit into my pack. The second thing was a large wooden mask in Zanzibar. I found it while walking with a Maasai I met on the beach. Again, it would have taken up three fourths of my bag. I have decided not to make those kinds of mistakes again, and so I have embarked on my random shit from France hunt. Thing one- a tajine. The North Africans cook a meaty stew to serve over couscous in a dark clay pot with a peaked lid. I believe Creuset is now making them for a few hundred dollars. I bought mine for ten bucks. My coworker Abder took me to Porte de Clichy, where a large community of Arabs and North Africans live. “Magrebiens” have taken over Paris a lot since I was here last, which means wonderful neighborhoods filled with bright dashikis, strong smells of sheesha, and halaal butchers. Abder is French, but his parents were both born in Morocco, so he spoke to the friendly shopkeepers in a smattering of Arabic and French. The tajine we found was in a butcher shop, and it is dark brown, heavy, and has a simple carved design in the lid. Abder says its very traditional, and I can use it in the oven, over an open flame, or on a gas lit stove. Thing two- a copy of The Little Prince…that HAS to be purchased from les bouquinistes, the book sellers who line the seine. For those of you who don’t know, I have a tattoo of the cover on my side that I got in Aix-en-Provence when I lived there. I finally found it the other day, from a sweet old couple who complimented my french and welcomed me to Paris. Thing three- a garden gnome (See previous blog posting about the Gnome Liberation Movement). This one is proving to be more difficult than expected. I have located a bitchin market on the ile de la cite, the big island that separates the left bank from the right, that sells live birds and exotic flowers. I spotted one or two there, which are terribly ugly, but the more I think about it, the more they seem to fit into my requirements for a gnome to bring back with me. Anyone want anything weird?

Play with your food

Here they are. Its really hard to find them, so when I saw them at the market in Antony, I impulse bought myself a few.

Sorry mom, dad.

La da di..

La da da..

I ask you, how can you NOT play with frog legs before you cook them? I ASK YOU!

Et voila.

They taste like fishy chicken, or chickeny fish.

When life gives you lemons....

...you waste them on baking disasters.
...you struggle to find the balance between tart and sugary baked goods.
...you paint that shit gold.
...you want to find the perfect lemon recipe, just cause Pecos likes it.
...you threaten to bring said baking disasters into work unleash them onto your coworkers.
...you clone them to make super lemons.
...you go through a bag of flour AND sugar before you can say "when life gives you lemons..."
...you remember how much of a bitch it is to convert recipes between the crisp, clean, metric system and idiotic imperial system.
...you aren't clear at the supermarket if you can use sucre crystallise to suffice for powdered sugar.
...your roommate says that your most recent disaster is "......good?"
...you are too stubborn to give up, and thus continue to hit up the lemon man at the market, who I am certain thinks I am suffering from a rare citrus deficiency.

So, I'm trying to make this perfect lemon dessert, and.....

The Translation Game

I think I mentioned that I muscled my way into translating at work. I am still making sales calls, 'lead generation' is my business jargon job title, technically, but more and more small jobs float my way now, from writing the forward in the new guide, to making the website sound like it wasn't written by a six year old foreign kid. I was translating something for the website last week. The sentence said, in french, "subscribe now and enter to win a case of champagne!" The translation that they had suggested was, in english, "subscribe now and win a case of six bottles of champagne!" I pointed out to them gently that although America's presence in the global community is not a very, ahem, admirable one, we do in fact know that a case of champagne has six bottles in it.
Without nerding out on you all too much, translation is the concept of moving an idea from one language to another, not just translating word by word, and I think my boss is now sick or hearing me use the word 'context', which is why she gave in and gave me the projects just to shut me up. First, I received a list of word and parts of sentences, and was asked to translate them. I...didn't. My big prideful stubborn love of language brain refused such nonsense. I wrote a LENGTHY email explaining that they wouldn't dare have me write for the french website, so why have a frenchie write for the english website when I'm sitting right here. It worked, but for god sakes people, give me some context. Marie and I have begun the arduous, time consuming, and downright delightful process of translating the whole damn website. I am certain that everyone else in the IFE program is also translating, but I feel this probably undeserved sense of pride in now being the trusted one in the office to look over all things by non native English speakers. I am still astonished by the level of english written by foreigners like Lisa the German, who writes newsletters in english for the website like I do. Go ahead, rifle through the last few weeks of news articles and see if you can pick out which ones I wrote and which ones ze German wrote.
(Random side note- If I fail to capitalize or erroneously capitalize a nationality or language, I hold the french entirely to blame. They don't capitalize these things, we do. There, grammatical errors from here on in rationalized. I expect no mom corrections. That's right, Susan Marie Rexrode, I am looking at you.)
I have thus transformed "We invite you without reservation to email or call us whenever you have further questions not addressed by this website" to "Contact us". French is flowery. They loooove their words, but an english website is an english website, and when it comes to Americans being of a country that honors individualism, there has yet to be a whole lot of deviation when it comes to universal buttons.
Another thing I forgot to tell you during the last few episodes of Paige's Inane Ramblings is that they serve booze at the lunch cafeteria. BOOZE. I have yet to partake but i will damnit, oh I will. If nothing else that I learned from drinking on the job at Woodstock's Pizza in San Diego, I learned that the more soaked you are, the better business you do. Within reason, duh. Thats it. Happy Easter. Go hunt and eat rabbit, or whatever.

Ketchup

This is gonna be a crash grab wham bam kinda entry. I've been slacking, and I'm going to recap the past few what, has it been weeks?! in bits and pieces. One Friday, I went after work to a bar in the Parc Butte Chaumont called la Rosa Bonheur with a few coworkers. It was properly sunny, and Casey, Abder, Laetitia and I drank rose wine in the sun on long wooden picnic tables with the freshly-out-of-the-office-and-soaking-up-the-weekend crowd. I left at some point to go meet up with my friend Emily and her boyfriends friends for a beer on the tip of the Ile St Louis, where we watched fire breathers across the Seine at another popular evening public drinking hole. Another time, I had a picnic on the Champs de Mars, the gardens that lie at the feet of the Eiffel Tower, again, with wine and lazy Sunday folk, on the tiniest square of grass they could afford with all those degenerate youths. I celebrated Em's birthday on Sunday by having Mexican food made my Mexicans who mocked my hybrid french/spanish, we had champagne and chocolate and strawberries at the park, a charcuterie plate with some wine, held a pint in one hand and a petanque (bocci) ball in the other outside in the setting sun, but mainly just talked and laughed.
I bullied my way into translating for my company. I pointed out numerous embarrassing language errors on the english website, and told them I could help. It took two emails to the head cheese to get the ball rolling, but they finally gave in to my evident genius and now people come to me daily with translation questions. Its only a matter of time before I'm running the place.
Apparently, I am still a student. A rude awakening, I know. I am required to attend classes on Mondays after work, which make Mondays loooooong. The professor and I basically have private conversations in front of the rest of the class, who, like the tender youths that they are, fall asleep, text in class, and doodle. For those IFErs reading this, admit it. You do. Helene, the professor, is breaking down the European Union, and I am nerding out on it. She has picked up on this, and so when she asks a questions, or simple speaks in general, she just looks directly at me. The days I'm not on my game, its an effort to look fascinated, but I don't have that problem for the most part.
Ok, off to the daily grind. Ta ta.

Part III

So, carrying on. Each day, I scan an excel spreadsheet of clients who have utilised Bedouk's services in the past. They are organized by time zone. First thing after I begin work, I call the UAE, cause they've been up for a while. I catch South Africa and the Scandinavian countries by mid morning, wait to call England before lunch, and am talking to New York and Rio De Janeiro by the afternoon. Each country has their own flavour, I'm learning. The Germans have investigative secretaries, Morocco and Tunisia give me empty promises, and the Argentinians stumble poorly and bravely through their English. If the French, Belgium, and Luxembourg clients are nice, I switch to French (If not, them flounder). My favorite are the Dutch,m who seem tickled when I ask them about their day and wish them a nice weekend. I've already arrived at that all too familiar level of recognition known to secretaries, so Rachel of Sweden and Ahmed of Egypt know my voice.

And then there are the French that sit around me. Marie to the front, Cyril to my left, Valere behind me and a floor to ceiling window to my right where I watch old metro cars rush to and from Paris and tiny cars circle the grandiose fountain in unassuming Antony. Cyril stands up and tests the limits of his phone cord, pacing as much as one can pace in a two feet tethered radius around his desk as he makes his sales calls. Marie uses me as a walking translation programas she mirrors the French website with its International (see: English) counterpart. Valere is the snarky web master who has me writing articles for the weekly newsletter. We make paper airplanes, we share gum, we make talk about the weird guy I just got off the phone with.

Cause if I had waited any longer, my family would've disowned me.



My big ugly mug at the Musee D'Orsay. Photos forbidden. I was chased around by old
volunteers wagging their fingers all day long. Their POINTER fingers.



Wannabe baobab in the Jardin des Plantes.

I loved this. Its the backside of the Natural History Museum, which is on my list. Apparently there are hundreds of taxidermed (Real word? Not certain.) animals, all stuffed "in motion", and there all look like there in a big rush to head out the front door. Some famous dude being haloed by what I'm assuming are sawfish bones.

The Mosque in Paris. I guess there's only one. Super photogenic building. Don't worry, there's more.

See.

Ooh, look, another one!

I decided to make a Arab/Muslim day out of it, and after a mini photo shoot at the Mosque and the Arab World Institut (See above), I headed home and had some mint tea. All I was missing were the tiny cups. Well, I guess an Arab or a Muslim might have sufficed.

Pretending I'm deep and artsy.

For Dad. Me. In a park. Cold.

Kinda fuzzy, but I think you all might know what that thing is.

I'd like to think I look SLIGHTLY more french than this at some point during this sejour.

Alicia, an old exchange student, and I in front of the American cemetary near Metz, near the border with Germany. They were kinda happy to have us around that time.

Attention! First crepe.

Did I warn the vegetarians about this photo? Hmmm....

View from my bedroom window. Snowy day in Antony.

My room. If it looks like a cozy dorm, then it must be a cozy dorm, right?

Pecos. Me. Nuff said.

My clementine cake. Juicy. Really. It was.

The french love their carousels.

Wild Mushroom Tarte.

Part II

I have a badge. That's right. It gets me onto my floor, plus there's a rent-a-cop on the 1st floor, some soft spoken teenage girl I could break over my knee if I was so inclined If the building is taken over by terrorists, we're all screwed. Its like having a fish as a guard dog. I charged some money onto my badge, so I can get cheap espresso and semi-disastrous cafeteria food at lunch. My manager had me go and fetch her a cappuccino today. I think that means I have been officially initiated into the intern hall of shame. That and I spend lunch giggling and bitching over our food trays in the cafeteria with the other interns like school girls. I was quickly aligned with Casey, Eszter the Hungarian, Julia the Austrian, and Lisa the German. Not much juicy drama yet, but we get to commiserate about being the bottom rung. None of us take the general disregard for our presence very seriously, and we all work quite well together. Bedouk is broken into two geographic areas, the French team and the International team (funny, sorta like France vs. The World). Since Bedouk is French, most of their clients and business are done in French. I'm (obviously) on the international team, and the language used is English. It was a bit daunting seeing numbers to be called in Morocco, Russia and Saudi Arabia, but being someone who is learning another language, I know how to slightly alter my vernacular and speed to talk to these people in English, and I just bust through their Gutentags and Shaloms and we get along just fine. More on this later.

Bedouk

Ok, theres a lot to relay concerning this subject and since some of you readers have proved to get a teensy weensy bit snippy when I'm not producing regularly, I'll make tiny installments. I must also preface this by saying its going to get a little stream of consciousy here. There's a lot to tell and I'm no pro writer, so I hope you'll take what you can get. I prepped for my first day at the internship by allowing ample time and leaving early. I left at 9:25. I begin work at 9:30. Now I know how long it REALLY takes, I'm not forced to be so absurdly cautious and I leave at 9:28. Have I mentioned that I don't have to cross the road to get to work, cause I don't. Bedouk has been bought out by InfoPro, who does, lots of things, I guess. Luckily, working as an intern means I'm not expected to know anything or do anything correctly. It's like being a baby. Or a dog. My manager is from L.A. She married a frenchman, which is how she has managed to infiltrate the Fort Knox that is the European employment systems. On my first day, I was placed under the kind and gentle supervision of Casey, an intern from Illinois who has been at Bedouk since November. She was at IFE, so she knows all the pertinent info I need regarding the paperwork, relationship, and expectations between Bedouk and IFE. It seems that Bedouk couldn't function without interns. I am one of four. I guess I should back up. Bedouk plays the role of a business travel agent. Companies use Bedouk's free venue finding service to locate convention halls, meeting spaces and event centers all over the world. Bedouk connects large companies with these venues and hotels, who then pay for their finders fee. Its a valuable tool for companies with enough money in this economy to continue holding international conferences and no time to do the venue hunting themselves. Assuming, however, they let me finish my pitch and not just hang up on me like the "proper" English tossers that they sometimes have a tendency to reduce themselves to, at least when I get fustrated and start calling them names (see above). My job is to call these clients, meeting planners and enterprises that hold international events and offer to help, free of charge and without taking anything off their commission if they receive one. If this sounds difficult, its because it is. I floundered a bit the first few days, but by Friday I actually caught myself leaning back and swivelling in my desk chair, one foot on the windowsill, one hand twirling a pen in the air while schmoozing with John Doe of Boring Industries in Rainy, England. K, that's all I got in me today, more on the myriad of co-workers later. Hi ho, hi ho......

More fooood.

I have been introduced to the Smitten Kitchen food blog. Have you been there? Do you know about it? Cheddar Beer and Mustard Pull Apart Bread?! She can't be stopped. I fell back into the kitchen when Pecos left, realizing that I need some favorite standbys. All my cooking life, I keep taking on completely new recipe, trying something completely different with curious ingredients each time, which ends in either something that needs to be tweaked, something f%#@*&$ amazing that I have some difficulty recreating with the same delicious fervor, or something scary. I need dishes that people associate with me. And then I found this website, and it all went out the window. Clementine Cake, made with WHOLE clementines? Aww HELL yeah! So, you boil four or five small clementines or forty five minutes, until they stop resembling clementines and begin resembling children's interpretations of puppy chew toys in the shape of clementines. You seed 'em, mash em up, skin, pith and all, and mix in a bunch a eggs, a shit ton of almond powder, some levure chimique (I'm sorry, I really don't remember whether this is baking soda or baking powder. It required multiple trips to the store, asking my roommate, looking online, and taking notes on packaging. And after all that sleuthing, I don't even remember. Nice.), and a cup of sugar to balance out the skins and pith. Bake. Done. Eat. It was lovely, and super duper moist.

But why stop there? Pre-made dough is a staple. I see one out of five people around me in the grocery store carrying this shit around, so I picked one up. If the french use it, then it must be good. This theory is extended to all foodstuffs, and when Pecos and I went to the market in Antony, he witnessed me being conned by two audacious mushroom pushers. The french are mushroom aficionados, which I learned in Aix-en-Provence when I saw multiple mushroom sellers at the markets being swamped with business. There are too many mushrooms to count in this country, so I go somewhere between boring button and super expensive cepe, a kind of truffle spin off that goes for about 25 euro for 100 grams. Yikes. One kind looked nice, and the woman was already shoving handfuls of it into a grocery bag, and before I knew it, I was buying a kilo of them. ITS LIKE THEY SAW ME COMING. "They'll melt down" they kept insisting while i hummed and hawed over the need for a bulging bag. The insisting was kind of half assed, the man flapping his wrists at me lazily, knowing I was his puppet. We both saw the woman smile knowingly at my gullibility. Aww fuggit. These things would cost fifteen bucks a pound in the states. I paid under five. I ate mushroom with ever meal, until my conscience told me to finish them off, that even though they ARE fungus, I was pushing their expiration date. This is where the dough comes into play. I made Wild Mushroom and Creme Fraiche Tarte. I will upload photos after work today. They will make you run out and spend too much on shitty American mushrooms. HA! Take that.

Pecos

Pecos came to visit me. ALLL the way from Felton. Not even from Santa Cruz.We got to talk about Monty's and JB's. Floating in the river in Henry Cowell. Smoking pot in the redwoods. Felton stuff. He came in from Dallas like a bat outta hell, and hit the ground running like a trooper. I scooped his ass up from CDG and hurried him back to Antony, expecting to pour his tired ass into bed. He had a number of bleary eyed smiles before he crashed, one when an accordion player struck up a bellow-y tune that folded around his receptive ears on the metro, and anoter when we stepped into the first (of many) bakeries to buy his first Parisian baguette. He was on his own for the three remaining days of the week when I had class, spent it sleeping, going to the Louvre, and going to the Louvre, in that order, and each event taking up all the time the sun was in the sky. The first day, he put his French to the test, braving the Parisians on their own turf- a cafe. Ordering a latte, he was served a tea (for you non french speakers, "le the"-"the tea"- sounds eerily close to latte). He (regretfully, I think) was convinced into spending ample hours in the Louvre, but really perked up on our visit to the modern art museum, le Centre Pompidou, a museum that I liken to the way I feel about Chuck E Cheese or the Yellow Submarine, I like it, I find it to be incredibly curious, and sometimes it makes me feel a little strange. We sat on cushions in a re-created 1950's style tv room and watched video installations of people dressed like pyramids ski down mountain sides. We both adored it. We hit up the Dali museum too, since Picasso was closed for unexplained reasons and the Musee D'Orsay seemed to me to be too similar to the Louvre. A photo now exists of us inside the nail of a thumb sculpted by the mustached fiend himself. We sat on the banks of the Seine and got drunk off good champagne. We walked though marketplaces, parks, hip neighborhoods and cobblestone streets. We ate cheese that smelled like feet. We saw Rodrigo y Gabriela at l'Olympia. We dodged schoolchildren at the aquarium. We stood before the Eiffel Tower and listened to music in the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysee. He taught a bartender how to make a snake bite and I ordered us tarte aux pommes. We had an ok time, I guess. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Pecos.

What?!?! Sun?

The clouds have parted. Its no warmer, but my room has a south facing window, and I swivel my bed around the floor and nap in the sun like a cat. I bought a little ivy thing for my room. The walls are very white, and greenery helps me out in multiple ways. Thought I was going to lose him for a while there as I was testing his toleration to sunlight, the heater, and water. But I see new leaves coming through. My roommate Maja is German, her husband lives in Silicon Valley (we have a mug from the Monterey Bay Aquarium), and she cleans like its her job. She's actually vacuuming as I type.
Once the days brightened, I wandered over to the Parc de Sceaux, a town sized park conveniently situated near my apartment. I've been back everyday since I ventured that way, and began jogging, mainly cause I was sticking out by not jogging. I remember when I was in Aix-en-Provence and people of all ages would cat call me when I jogged around my neighborhood. Now the French have seemed to embrace jogging, and quickly ramped it up to the level of what I refer to as rabid nerdiness, complete with coats with skin tight hoods like a bobsledder and belts that hold two tiny bottles of water on each hip to distribute the weight. There are heaps of tiny trails winding through Edward Scissorhands-precise foliage that circle the vast moat around the stately museum. Its very Versailles-y. There's a dog park, fountains, a running track, and lots of benches to make out on. I am very taken with the place.
It being Sunday, I walked into bourgeois Antony ( I was told that being south of Paris is the only direction you want to be. My roommate actually saw a child kidnapped off of the metro in the west), and went to the market. Its one of those rich towns with pristine sidewalks and well-dressed locals. I managed to dodge the FN people handing out flyers supporting the frightening presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. The sellers must have seen me coming, cause everyone seemed to shout the perfect thing I needed. I bought snooty cheese, corsican dried sausages, cherries, and gorgeous whole wheat baguettes. I passed on the blueberries. I have this recipe that keeps nagging me- baked crepes with ricotta, lemon zest and blueberries. Recipe websites do NOT make eating locally very easy.
Last night I went to a concert waaaay the hell and gone in the 20th with my friend Emily. It was at the Maroquiniere, and we saw the Tune-Yards. Its a band that started out in Northampton, MA. Emily went to Smith, and we've struck up a groovy friendship, so I met here there. The beer was shit, so I ordered plastic cups of red wine. GOOD red wine. There were two openers, one was a group of uncomfortable looking french boys, who sorta rocked it in front of images of 1980's screensavers. Violent Femmes came to mind. The other was quite a character. A single dude wearing parachute pants who clearly had some operatic training, making sounds to a kind of spooky rhythmic Asian chant that reminded me of certain Tool songs. He was dancing like a Balinese dancer, and his vocal range made me think of System of a Down's lead singer. And then came Merrill and her band. She was amazing. She loops herself on the drums and on a ukulele. She also has an impressive range, plus she's just cute to watch. She had a room full of French hipsters (shit, if that's not a double threat, I don't know what is), bouncing around the room. It was. Fan. Tas. Tic.

Food Porn

I like food. I like eating food, cooking food, shopping for food, talking about food, prepping food, growing food and catching food. While others shop for shoes, I browse fromageries and tryy to get in good with the local butcher. I'm with my people. I know this next statement will issue cries of dissent from Italian/Asian/latin food crazies, but I believe French cuisine is tops. Its difficult to ignore the root of so many culinary terms. Off the top of my head- Saute, Marinade, Souffle, Julienne, Braise, Flambe, Fondue, Meringue. Chicken Cordon Bleu comes from the french cooking school, Cordon Bleu- "Blue Ribbon". Don't worry, the french won't let the world forget this. While France suffers from some of the lowest recover numbers after the economic crash in Europe, the cafe's are packed, and they aren't cheap. Hence me taking on the setiments literally. While I love wine, the world inimidates me slightly. I move more fluidly with food. And so here I find myself, at the Place Madeleine, in search for something that surpasses simple nutrition and approaches religious fervor or orgasmic pleasure (please forgive the blasphemy).

First stop was at La Maison du Miel- The Honey House. The saccarine smell made me jittery. There were large vats of golden honey behind the cash register, with a tap at the bottom. One customer was getting what I hoped was a years supply, large bubbles moving lazily up from the tap. I saw honey from Canada and New Zealand, but finally settled on a box of five, each honey made in France, flavoured with various curiosities- Acacia, Rosemary, Chestnut, Rhododendron, and Lavander. God knows what I'm going to do with Rhododendron honey. I moved around the Place Madeleine past upper class brasseries and shops seling five items, immaculately dressed young women buying 200 euro sunglasses and 40 euro chocolates for Valentines day from bored shopkeepers. Each doorway had an armed security guard, including the deli and the dog clothing store. Carrying around my bag from the Maison du Miel gave me an unwarranted self of entitlement to be walking around in this neighborhood, and so I ducked into Les Truffes. Truffles look like small moist balls of dirt, and cost about 40 euros for one the size of my big toe. Crazy, I know, but the beauty of truffles is that they are so fragrant, similar to rose water or elderberries, you only nee a small shaving to flavour an entire dish of tagliatelle aux cepes or risotto aux morilles. I bought a small bottles of black truffle out, and the smell followed me around for the rest of the day, and that was off of trying about 1/8 of a teaspoon. My taste buds were bombarded greedily like pushy italians. I didn't even make it to Mariage Freres, with their wall sized display of bucket sized tea from around the world, and to the Maille house, France's largest mustard producing family. Next time.

Pad

Living in Paris has been a dream of mine sine I was 16 and came with Mr. Harris and five french students for two weeks. I remember very clearly standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysee. It was Tuesday, or something equally banal, late afternoon, and the cafe's were packed. Women were smoking over their chevre chaud salads, tiny dogs sleeping in their laps. Everyone seemed to be buying something crazy expensive, and couples were bickering and making out with equal passion. Cars circling the Arc glanced their headlights off the crumbling baroque and roccoco buildings, and, if my memory serves me (and not my uber romantic side) correctly, someone somewhere was playing an accordion. Not all of these things, sound necessarily like aspects of a city to get hooked on, but I was in it to win it.

Fast forward. Check this shit out. I just moved in with Maja, a 30 year old German chick, and her bomb ass apartment. We live in Antony (look it up). My metro stop is a block from my brand new building. Sure, there's no crown molding or vaulted ceilings, but there's also no mold or vaulted prices (see how I did that?) The balcony and my bedroom window are south facing, there's a bathtub, and oven, a dishwasher, and a washer. I'm not sure you realize what I just wrote. There's a bathtub, an oven, a dishwasher, and a washer. It's hard enough to get a window in Paris.

There's a giant park nearby, that I hear talk of people jogging, which I will definitely take part in when it's not stupid cold. Although I have to trek into the city for class for three more weeks, the Bedouk (my intern company) building is on the same clock as my apartment. I don't have to cross the street to get there. It takes more time in the two elevators than it does to walk between the buildings. What I'm trying to say is I'm close.

Wabbit

Begin your drooling. Last night I tried Lapin a la moutard- Rabbit with mustard sauce. Ok, I'm gonna break down this Thumper recipe, because anyone within chasing distance of one should give this a shot. (A friend of mine in the program, upon hearing I was planning to prepare this dish, asked me in all seriousness if the rabbit was dead yet. I think she's already been exposed to too many of my eating-abroad stories.) Rabbit is rampant in France, which totally makes sense, cause the French love their game. It usually comes as a whole rabbit, chopped up into proper serving portions. I thought they did this to calm the nerves of the squeamish or tender-hearted (neither of which I subscribe to), until I saw fully intact sheep brains. I browned the pieces quickly, hearing rabbit can be quite dry, and braised it in broth, white wine, butter, shallots, garlic and thyme. I reduced the braising liquid on the stove top, chucked in a few tables spoons of Dijon and stone ground mustard, served it with parsley and zucchini rice, and descended up on it with ravaging vigor. It was killer, it also made the kitchen smell nice. Not too gamey, which is good, because kangaroo never seemed to be cooked right, despite claims of it being delicious. I've rediscovered my affinity for quinoa tabbouleh, and have sights on lamb couscous, since I found dirt cheap ras al hanout at one of the many hallal butchers in Antony (Bless France's relative proximity to Northern Africa. )

Neige

I know, I'm supposed to be writing about le bilan de la colonisation francaise entre les annee 1830 et 1945. But there is something wildly entertaining going on outside and I can't help but turn away from my desk in my new apartment and cradle a cup of tea in my hands as I watch the French interact with snow. The night I moved in, I went out looking for a quick dinner, and it spat snow at me for about twenty minutes. Now, being a California girl, I'd of course rather be in the sun somewhere, but its gonna snow, it better friggin snow. None of this spitting shit. Years in Massachusetts made me appreciate the quietness of snow, the cleansing power, the stark colors, the communal inclination to go outside and act like a fool. I woke to the sound of someone scraping their car. I am now in my room, my window looking down onto the petit rue du nord, and have enjoyed watching the pristine sidewalks become speckled with footprints. Apparently, the plan for the day was for all fathers to come out with their little girls to take advantage of the first snow of the season. I didn't get the memo. The three mini cars parked out front of my building have been wiped clean of snow by tiny pink mittens and large black gloves, offering a respite from my paper every thirty minutes or so. Some father are showing their daughters the science of making a perfect snowball, who then carry the thing with wonder. Others simply pummel their little girls into giggling fits of oblivion.  I've got some perfect snow music on which seems to give a perfect soundtrack to the small balls of coats and hats that bumble around experimentally. I've got a recipe here also that provides distraction- Braised Rabbit with a Grainy Mustard Sauce. Perfect dinner for a winter day in the suburbs of Paris? Just maybe.

Weekend action

Despite being in Paris, I'm bored. Our classes are 3 1/2 hours long, and being very in style with the french education system, we don't ask questions, we just absorb as much as possible, given its THREE AND A HALF HOURS LONG.

Friday,  I invited some of the IFE clan over for a drink. One kid showed up with two huge backpacks, explaining that his homestay situation dissolved into a total shit show, and he was technically homeless for five days until he moved into his new apartment. I insisted he pass on a hostel ( I know all too well how those things operate), and crash on my spare bed. He slept on the Murphy bed in the living room until yesterday. He was a mix of Woody Allen and a Judd Apatow character. I miss his panicked rantings.

We went to a rugby game on Saturday at the Stade de France outside of the city. It was Toulouse against....stripey blue team. We never could find out, being too embarrassed to ask the rabid fans sitting around us. We pieced together the rules with help from my previous exposure to the game, but we mainly drank beer, talked about chicks and movies and ate hot dogs. Sorta like Giants games back home, except the hot dog was in a baguette.

Sunday, Adam slept all day like a 20 year old hungover college student, and I paid homage to the Eiffel Tower, my guilt of not visiting the symbol of France finally becoming unbearable, despite it peeking its cheeky little head between buildings at pleasantly unexpected moments. I walked home along the Seine, passing the Musee D'Orsay, Pont Neuf, Boulevard Saint Michel, Rue de Mouffetard, ending finally in my neighborhood, Chinatown, where the Chinese New Year was coming to a loud (fireworks) and smokey (again, fireworks) finale.

Adam left yesterday. He also left a bottle of gin and a box of cookies hidden in an empty cabinet in the bathroom. Did I say that I missed him yet? Oh well, new apartment tomorrow.

Trotters

I do not like the term trotters. I guess it all stems from "having the trots," an Australian expression for diarrhea. But when you are trying to convince the general public to eat something, ok, lets all be real here, gross, you have to give it a fancy name. Take Squab. Rocky Mountain Oysters. Vegemite. Whoops, got away from myself there for a while. Trotters are pigs feet. They should, in my opinion, be any animals feet, but I wasn't the one to discover that they could be eaten, so I will secede. It does mean, however, that I should be able to give a name to french fries dipped in a vanille milkshake. So, here is my maiden voyage with les pieds de cochon.

Purchase-
I woke up on Sunday, and it just felt like a day to cook something strange. I walked through the Sunday market on Avenue d'Italie with the devout and the hungover, and found him. My man. Mr. French Butcher. His hands looked like swollen pink chops of meat. He was wearing a hat with a GD pheasant feather in it. He actually burped in the middle of a transaction. I had seen ears and tails and cow tongues and the like, and was almost tempted to buy some pig cheeks, which are supposed to be delicious, but I was on a mission. He grabbed two front feet, beat the shit out of them with a butchers knife to split them, since all the good stuff is inside, and, upon hearing I was both a pigs feet virgin AND an American, he practically threw an arm around my shoulders and offered me a drink. He walked me through the steps of cooking un bon pied de cochon, which subsequently led me to mentally throw out the other recipes I was considering for this food anomaly. Screw lentils with pigs feet, pigs feet stew and braised pigs feet. I was going to make some potatoes stewed with pigs feet, because he told me to. I immediately bought a small bag of filthy potatoes, and hurried home.

Prep-
They don't feel good. Like, think human skin. I threw them into a big pot with a few liters of water, a quartered onion, the fresh bay leaves that he snuck into my bag without me looking, and a mish mash of herbs I found in the pantry left over by other tenants- sage, pink peppercorn, rock salt, garlic, and a few yummy smelling mystery leaves. About an hour into the stewing, the toes began spreading slightly, and I am not stoked to see a SERIOUS lack of meat. This is going to be one weird stew....

Eating-
An appropriate amount of stewing time later, I chucked in some potatoes, pumpkin, broccoli and a few mushrooms. I fished out the pigs feet and bay leaves, and, without much bravado, ate it. Verdict, you say? Broth flavor- CRAZY good. There is enough fat in the feet to give a heap of water the most lovely taste. The soup- meh. Butcher-man got the broth idea down pat, but I'm needing some meat in this mother.

Overall impression-
Making a stew? Buy pigs feet, but buy some other kind of meat to throw in there.

Ok, what should I make next? Cow brains? Frogs legs? Escargot?

FLNJ- an organisation all of you should be savvy of.

Years ago, I travelled to the tiny town of Montargis. An unassuming town just south of Paris, Montargis is surrounded by the woods. The modest, hardworking people of the town had recently been victims of rampant theft, targeted for their tastes. Their horrible, horrible tastes. A group calling themselves the Front de Libération de Nains de Jardin decended upon the tiny village of Montargis, among other towns within France, with one purpose in mind- to free the gnomes. That's right. Founded in 1996 in Alençon, the aim of the FLNJ was to save garden gnomes via nightly invasions (see "illegal") from the very own neighbors gardens, and return them to their natural environment. Some 7000 gnomes were liberated from suppresive gardens and front yards and released into the forest, glades, and woods. Police interaction, obviously, was required, and many FLNJ members were apprehended with literature and tiny shovels and ridiculous wheelbarrows (forms of slavery), the gnomes already released into the wild. Many a startled hiker came across the gnomes deep in the forest, sometimes solitary, sometimes entire communities, reunited with their own kind, each one equipped with food rations, mainly pasta, and "night vision goggles" (painted glasses). Although things have quieted down significantly in the past years, the FLNJ do pop up ostentatiously from time to time, to remind the people of France of the real home for these misunderstood "garden art". Lest we forget.

Proof

Look! Its me. I'm in Paris. I swear. If you squint real hard, you can see the eiffel Tower just about my right ear. Fine, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Enjoy this view while you can people. In a week, Ill have a different view from my balcony in Antony, namely, the building I'll be interning at. Boom.

Keep on Truckin.

I have a cell now. It was the cheapest one they had, I would describe the sound that the buttons make "a noisy racket", but its a quadri-band, and its mine. Its our first outing today, I'm expected matching yellow hats and a guide carrying a tiny yellow flag, but I'm a bit pessimistic when it comes to these types of things. I mean, I guess 28 loud young Americans can't generate TOO much attention on their own, now can they? I had dinner last night with some family friends, and since I am currently living alone, speaking only french in the classes, and reading french newspapers ( I made myself promise), I am kinda knee deep over here. English is limited to these blogs, some social networking contact, reading and music, the french is coming along rapidly. I find that french words come to me more naturally than before, and the english is lagging. I had a hell of a time writing an email to an old friend from high school who is living in Paris, and the letter was in english. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I was supposed to capitalize "french" and "english", but they don't in french, so the hell with it. Agnes and Nicolas and their girls spend some time at Nico's parents farm in Normany every year, and I have been invited. They threatened me with too much wine, too much food, and too much outdoors. Sounds horrible. My task for the day is to sign up for a Monoprix (supermarket) card, just to make me feel slightly more french. All of these obscure outings have forced me into situations which require me to describe things, offer elaborate hand gestures, and, my personal favorite, draw pictures. I keep forgetting to look up pertinent vocabulary before I wander into buy a cell phone, start a library card and the like, but no one seems to mind. They smile and bear with me, entertaining my "adorable" accent and my "cute euphemisms. Thank God I've got experience acting as the dumb tourist.

Classes with the girls... and three men.

Just as I suspected, I am the oldest one. Everyone else seems to have gotten a bit of a head start on me, being the ripe old age of 27. There's 28 of us, 25 being women, completely unsurprisingly. There is one other girl however who has also graduated, speaks comparable french to me, and also spent a year in France back in college. There's the usual smattering of college students, though a strange collection of Vassar and Goucher girls. I'm hearing about people interning at schools, museums, theatres, veterinary hospitals, Slow Food movement NGO's, and one guy is lucky enough to have landed a job DJ-ing a radio station here in the city. The one thing that I am happy (for the time being) to hear is that we are not allowed to speak English in the building, that is the IFE (Internships in Francophone Europe) building. It makes our conversations a bit staid, depending on the person speaking. While the more advanced can tell jokes and recount stories that "would have", "could have" and "had" been, others are forced into the tiny pen of what is happening right now. "I am from Illinois." "I do not like France." "Where is the wine?", or whatever it is 20 year olds talk about. I "wouldn't" know. Our first class was with a history professor, who walked us through the French Revolution. I'd like to pretend I was bored, but I wasn't. Although I've learned a hundred times about Napoleon and Marie Antoinette and that whole crazy bunch, I never seem to quite have the details filled in, and this guy was good, painted the whole picture Hollywood-like. After a long ass lunch (the french do like to eat), a young guy came in to talk about culture shock, albeit a boring subject, but he ramped it up by basically asking us what were were astounded by in France, what pissed us off, and moments of extreme embarrassment. It made for what amounted to a great story time, filled with les bises gone awry, bidet uncertainty and revulsion upon realizing what boudin noir is made of. For those of you wondering, I am still visiting the weird meat section whenever I poke my head into Monoprix, and those pig feet are still there. Waiting. Patiently.

Apartment hunting.

So, yes, remember that first time you went looking for an apartment? Something cute, good location, big kitchen, but nothing too expensive? Remember how exciting it all was? And then maddening? And when you learned something called an ageency fee, and Rupesh broke it to you that the cute apartment had a 1000 euro fee ON TOP of the already steep fee he was asking for? And when you saw undercover cops busting drug dealers right in front of the building you were just about to walk into to check on a flat? And when the one place that you might actually afford has NOT been designed for tall people, and you can see yourself bashing your forehead against the mezzanine bed in the middle of the night, and then stumbling blindly down the hall to the SHARED toilet? And that one apartment who smelled like the previous tenant hadn't bathed in weeks, where you had to provide your own lights and chairs? And that one guy you inquired about the room won't stop emailing you, asking if youre single and to send personal photos? And remember that other guy who wants you to western union him the money, since, you know, hes in India and all? Yeah. I sure do.

My date with a dead man.

I stood him up yesterday. I said bye to mom, came back to the condo to clean, laundry, listen to music, apartment hunt, etc. Somehow the time got away from me, and the thought of traipsing back up north for "my date with a dead man" was too taxing, so I decided to go out for my first night on the town. Alone. This is always an interesting experience, no matter how many times I do it in a new city. This particular trip, out to rue Oberkampf, was suggested to me by Lonely Planet. Now why the hell I listened to LP and didn't use it as kindling is beyond me, but it led me astray. Its lofty promises were reduced to drunk youths (I mean, like youths), a few drunk bums, and drunk tourists. And sober Paige. A bad combination. Apparently french men have adopted a new curious habit. I don't remember this happening to me when I lived south, but three men veered into my path to intentionally run into me. If the purpose of this social experiment is to pick up women, it doesn't work. Even if I HAD been interested, they are walking the other direction. Bizarre. It soon began to rain, and after a beer at a packed bar, I called it a night.
Today was my day though. I took the metro way the hell up and gone north of the city to the Marches aux puces de st-ouen, a massive antiques flea market. (This metro trip's soundtrack has been brought to me by- Paul Simon, Arcade Fire, Fela Kuti.) I didn't bring my camera. These kind of world famous flea markets are plastered with "Pas de Photos, SVP", so I'll walk you through what I saw. Old bearded men sharing their lunches with old bearded dogs. The distinctive pop of a wine bottle draws my attention to a family of (at least) five generations having an extravagant lunch. Theres nothing quite like a store filled with classic 50 year old Dior and Yves Saint Laurent to cause me to tug self-consciously at my 50 cent yard sale finds. One dress had more fabric than all the clothes I was wearing at the time- and remember, Paris in winter. I saw a store selling only spectacular ballroom type chandeliers, one six feet in diameter, the ground of the floor completely bare. I bought a small paper cone of chesnuts, charred slightly over a fire housed in an old metal trashcan. A lot of the stalls on the outskirts of the flea market were run by men playing french rap, which I cannot for the life of me take seriously (thats not really fair though, I don't take most rap seriously, but seeing two men trying their best to look tough give each other kisses kinda deflates the image a bit). I saw a lot of crap we sell at the auction house, whose technical names and descriptions I fear have been engraved permanently into my brain. I fell across a wicked maze of life and larger than life sized metal garden statues of various animals. I took notes in my little black notebook as I walked, and one woman, lubricated by her daily ration of french wine, asked me if I was a reporter. Before I could answer, she began to tell me about what she thought of the market, offering me her name, you know, so I could print if for my paper. I played along, scribbling squiggles in my book. She seemed very pleased with herself. I saw old women chatting, their cigarettes bouncing along with their lips.
At two, I made it to la Chope de Puces, where, on the weekends, play live gypsy jazz. The place is a Django Reinhardt mecca, and arriving late, I held up the bar with my rouge with the rest of the grizzly head-nodding, foot-tapping men. It felt like I had returned to the age of the beatniks, but no one was snapping. Its Django's birthday on Monday, so I enjoyed his memory while watching a weathered musician bend over his guitar. Pretty nice way to spend my day before classes start tommorow.

Dinner with some old friends

We went out last night with  Stephane Toullieux and his beautiful family, Magali, Raphaella and Hugo.  Stephane is a Parisian who stayed at our house as a foreign exchange student when I was three. The Toullieux family, including his parents, sister, wife and two children, have been exchanging christmas cards with us since then, and every time we swing through Paris, we have dinner. The Eiffel Tower that Stephane sees is quite a bit larger than the one we see, and his house is covered with cool stuff he has collected from his years of travel to countries that make me jealous; Madagascar, Morocco and Mongolia are three that come to mind. He can make cultural references to the US that astound me. Last night at dinner he made a Reggie Bush/Jeb Bush joke, mentioned a Vanity Fair article quoting Biden's opinion of Mitt Romney, and uses a startling variety of American slang and expressions. When we came by his flat, he was watching a college football game, and had a book on his coffee table about James Dean. We walked past an address that was the new political headquarters for a candidate I don't know, and then we went to a restaurant where a famous French actor I didn't know was eating. Those Americans...embarrassing.

Susan here......at my 60th BD party last month I was telling people that one of the greatest gifts I can name is the miracle of having doubled my group of really wonderful friends within the last 5 years. At a time (not to be maudlin) that you start to lose friends, to have so many new friends in my life is an unexpected pleasure. Still, when I sit across from Stephane and his family, and I remember how long we've known each other, it reminds me that old friends are important too. Very important- and worth the effort it takes to keep in touch. I hope to see them sometime soon in either Felton or Mexico. Mexico- definitely.

So on to day to day details- today the famous soldes started and we were ready. We had our list of shopping/souvenirs items  we simply had to have, and so we used our navigo (metro pass) autre fois and headed out. Nothing. So we are back at our flat, having lunch and a rest, then back out to Place D'Italie, a nearby shopping area that might yield a treasure. We are confident! And determined. Wish us luck.

Entry one, since a title doesn't really apply to this post.

When I held the torn piece of warm croissant between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, it turned to butter. Brilliant. There is a book called le Guide de Vin in our appartment in the 13th, so I've been brushing up on my knowledge of the world of french wines. Its daunting. The book is thick enough that I wouldn't be able to break if an old woman with a baby stroller darted unannounced in front of my car, assuming the book was wedged maliciously under the pedal. You can see through the pages, as if you were reading the bible secretly by candlelight. Actually, the bible comes to mind, complete with red mottled cover and the string page holder. My head is now full of romantic sounding wines, like Pouilly-Fuisse and Cotes du Roussillon Villages. Sorta makes me want to drink a lot of it. Mom and I are avoiding the crowds and lines of the Eiffel Tour, the Musee D'Orsay, Champs Elysee and the like, for stranger, more bizarre neighborhoods. We did find ourselves on the Pont Neuf between the impossibly micro-managing Alliance Francaise and the curly Louvre protecting its pointy pyramid, and I gotta tell you, those areas are touristy for a reason. Thousands of locks were clamped down on the chicken fence under the railings preventing curious dogs from fatal curiosity. Each lock had names of young lovers separated by the ever-promising heart, and the key, I assume, launched into the Seine. To hit the point home, there were lots, LOTS, of couples sucking face on the benches, sometimes so many crammed on to one point I kept expecting one young woman to caress the back of another mans neck. Here's mom.

Wow, how can I follow that? On a more pragmatic, motherly note, I'll report on the mundane fact that this morning we were UP and OUT of the apartment BEFORE 11 AM.........this is remarkable because yesterday morning we got up (well, Paige got up, finally) at 10:25. Yep. On vacation, or something. Of course, jet lag, 3 flights in one day and colds for both of us- all contributing factors. We have been covering neighborhoods previously unexplored by either of us and are enjoying the lack of crowds and the variety. Today we spent 90 minutes going through Chinatown (we are on the edge of it), returned for lunch, then out again to the right bank for a scripted tour of les passages. Our good friend Stephane ( who we will be dining with tomorrow night) introduced us to the this wonderful side of Paris about 11 years ago and we have been eager to return to them ever since. Quaint and picturesque- I don't know how the shops stay open as the prices are high, the items obscure and the serious buyers few. Still, we loved it.

And if Paige hasn't covered it as yet, we are staying in an apartment in the 13th...on the 18th floor of a complex that has a pool on the roof. Our place is fine: usable kitchen, bath with a SHOWER CURTAIN, balcony, washer (but no dryer.....???) and that ever popular, can-we-plug-this-into-the-search-engine item, a piano. A piano. Now mind you- the bedroom does not have a closet. None.  And the best part of the piano that takes up more than it's fair share of the living area? You can't play it. Because as it so succinctly says in the handy renters book left for us to read and use--------if you play the piano, the police will come. Evidently our neighbors are NOT music lovers.

P- The large French woman who lives inside me head took over the diminutive Spanish gentleman ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. I couldn't even say Torres Del Paine without sounding like a Spanish one French student. Everyone seems to get me, everyone thinks I'm English (cause, you know, Americans don't speak another language), and since there is a new onslaught of foreigners in Paris, the odd accent here or there doesn't seem to throw even the Parisians, nowadays. I guess since the last time I spent any time in France was when I was living in the south in 2005, I was a bit sheltered to the facts of living in the big city, i.e. a smattering of skin tones, languages, greeting techniques, volume of voices, heights, overt friendliness/immediate disdain that I have grown to see as my people in the years I have been travelling. Trust me, I am NOT complaining. I don't remember the last time I saw some of these weird Asian dishes I loved and have since forgotten about. And the couscous. Oh my. I have decided that my little adventure for this time spent in Paris will be semi- dedicated to weird foods, specifically, weird meats. Oh, and the internship, I suppose. Unidentifiable body parts never did scare me, and I am now curious about those meats I see whose names don't even bother including the animal it originated from. In the deepest parts of the meat counter, you can't find a "beef" or "pork". We've jumped straight on over into "tripe", "head", "brains". I will keep you posted, vein by bloody vein. (Got a little Marquis on you, sorry.)

I just couldn't help myself...

What are filles jolies supposed to DO with all this artistic inspiration? I've just got artistic inspiration coming out of, you know.

P&S