Bringing a Little FABULOUS to 64 Rue Saint-Louis en l'Ile

What is it about Bravo shows? I hate that I fall prey to them, their polished exteriors, their money spewing out of every orifice, and their endless legions of FABULOUS gay men decorating things. I just sit there watching until the episode is over, eyes wide like an eight year-old boy seeing boobs in a movie for the first time, and when it's over I click on the next one.*

These people are aliens. They're all artists in the design studio, the design firm, or the design kitchen. There might be vague allusions to hardship, but it comes off like their shit smells like potpourri on the show. They wear the craziest outfits I've ever seen in the mini reality-show interview segments, and it makes me want to dress like that. The editors make it seem like they're running out of time, but then you see the outfit, or the newly-decorated loft, or the pig cheeks with wasabi, and it's clear it was just done like that for dramatic tension. Every motherfucking time, it's impossible not to fly my one-man studio apartment spaceship right into the wormhole to planet FABULOUS.

* Thanks again, internet thieves, for doing all of my dirty work for me.

Scarf!

Please see my flickr site for my brief scarf fashion show. As you can see, I am befuddled by scarves. Keep those scarf-wearing ideas coming! Remember, I'm working with a medium-length, broad, plaid, acrylic scarf, so nothing that involves elaborate looping will work.

Day in the Life: Aujourd'hui Edition!

1. Up! Coffee! Cheerios! Interwebs while I drink the coffee. With the showering!
2. AAAAAGH! It's a "I have to go to the laverie day!" Might as well (um, finally) wash the sheets while I'm at it. Everything goes in the pillowcase (thanks for the tip, B.) Walk walk walk. 4.50 euro / load.
   
3. Return chez moi. E-mails! Call the UC center: "S, do you know anything about my train tickets that I don't have. No? Ok." Call ACCENT: "ACCENT guy, do you...you do?! Hot damn!"
   
4. Back to the laverie. Stuff in the dryer. Go for a walk around the island for 30 minutes. Stuff out, back to the apartment.
5. Get tickets! Get package from my mom! Hey, it's a scarf! Now I will be virtually invisible, lost in the crowds of scarf-wearers!
6. Still time to go to Monoprix! Walk walk walk. 28 euros for basic things to eat for a few days! Also: toilet paper and new sponges for dish-washing.
7. Wolf down sandwich. 20 minutes to sit and stare blankly at the wall. To the BNF!
8. Walk walk walk. Ignore spitting rain. Ignore option of taking the metro instead.
9. Aaaaaah...Gorz's journalistic pseudonym Michel Bosquet's Critique du Capitalisme Quotidien. Light reading for a few hours. Notes!
10. Ugh. Bored and tired. I've been here for 2.5 hours...good enough. Walk walk walk.
11. Decide not to work out. Legs hurt. Stretch.
    
12. Blog post update!

For next time: how the fuck do you wear a scarf, anyway? I will ask you, my fashion-forward readers, to chime in. Also, I will model various possibilities I can think up. Expect both Blue Steel and Magnum.

Sorry, Paris

I received an e-mail from my homie C earlier today filling me in on odds and ends she thought I should hear about. One odd/end was the fact that she knew someone who knew someone who was doing PHD work in Paris the same time I was and who, apparently, was also "hating" being here. I immediately felt like a schmuck reading that e-mail, thinking about how 80% of what I've told people about back home has been negative, about my constant complaining and chickenshit avoidance of stressful situations. I'm not crazy about returning home with the reputation of being the guy who got to go to Paris on someone else's dime and spent the whole time bitching, although that's certainly the case.

So here's an open letter to Paris expressing my feelings:

Ma Chere Paris,

I'm writing to apologize for my behavior over the last few months. It's not like an obscure graduate student from a random state university could really besmirch your reputation, but I still wanted to make sure that we understood one another.

First and foremost, you've been more than welcoming during my time here. Parisians, while curt and businesslike, are also polite, civil, and very professional. No one has been openly rude during my entire stay, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. In particular, everyone has been very understanding with my French, tolerating the mispoken word or the mangled phrase and making it clear that the important thing is communication, not perfect grammar.

The thing is, it doesn't matter that I'm here, in the Ile de France, versus anywhere else on the planet. I'm essentially a "local" - I like to hole up in a place and surround myself with familiar things. There's no way I can do that here or anywhere else outside of the United States; I'm too much an American, too much given to the blundering, overly generous, naive and bright-eyed kind of attitude that marks us off from Europeans. And I miss my wife too much; you have to know that the major reason I've been unhappy here is that she and I spend almost all of our time together, and that we like it that way. I can't be away from her for more than a few weeks and keep it together.

There's another issue. I don't blame you for this so much as I blame...well, as we academics call it, "late capitalism." You're too expensive for me, Paris. All of the ex-pat love stories about Paris, all of the literature from the 20s - 40s, the happy memories of my parents' generation travelling through in the 60s, even the generation of academics who earned their degrees in the 80s, they all experienced a Paris with a weak currency, with cheap housing, with restaurants and bistros and cafés that you could afford to eat at every day. You and I both know that that's completely impossible now. By my calculations, it costs TWELVE TIMES as much to eat out as it does to stay in, and I'm talking about a modest café meal! You really leave me no choice but to camp out in my (expensive) apartment and have pasta fourteen times per week. Again, it's not your "fault" in so many words, it's just a neutral fact that makes it tough to be here.

I don't want to ramble at you, so I'll cut this short. Thank you for your beautiful architecture, for the way the light looks different here than anywhere else I've ever seen, for the bridges and the happy dogs on walks and the efficiency of the metro. Thank you for your smartly-dressed citizens, for the helpful staff at the BNF, for the 2-euro Vieux Papes wine.

Thanks for everything, Paris, but I want to go home.

Bien Cordialement,
-KFR

2004

After two days' hindsight, I realized why I had been so terrified, in such a specific, peculiar way. It wasn't just the idea that Obama could lose. It was the memory of 2004, an election that the Dems should have won like a basketball game against a quadriplegic.* Instead, they nominated a decent, honest man with all of the charisma of a wet sock and got shot full of holes by the Karl Rove ugly-campaign machine...and they still only lost 51/49%.

This year was similar in that there was no way the Dems should have lost, but people like me, we're just too used to watching it all go to shit. After eight years of the most disastrous presidency in our history, after two horrific and pointless wars, after a total financial meltdown, there should have been no ambiguity about who was going to win...but there was. And what I was most scared of was that, if we lost this time, what hope was there for the future? How could circumstances ever recommend a Democrat more strongly than it did RIGHT NOW?

I am so grateful that they (the Dems) finally got a powerful campaign going, and more grateful that Obama himself has the most unshakeable resolve of any human being on the planet. Personally, I'm pretty sure he's a rad presidential cyborg.

* This is the only metaphor that I could think of off of the top of my head.

FUCK YEAH

I checked as soon as I woke up.

Like most of you, I'm sure, I can't even express how excited and relieved I am. It looks like we're not out of the woods on the idiotic right-wing Christian ballot measures back in California, but at least the big race was won.

P.S. As usual, the Onion nailed it: nation finally shitty enough to make social progress.

I Will Be Holding my Breath...

...until the election results are in. Which, for those of us in Paris, is Wednesday morning.

Your Occidental Reporter,
-KFR

It's Come to This

...I finally broke down and joined Facebook. So, if you're on there, find me and OHMYGOD TOTALLY FRIEND ME, YOU GUYS!!!

I'm going to keep the KFR online identity separate from Facebook; I'm flying under my real name there and will be keeping my identity all scrubbed-clean and sanitized, since I wanted to join in part to network academically.

This is just the latest foray in my life project to be four years behind everyone else.

Addendum: Hot damn! My submission to Cake Wrecks is online! I found this one on some random flickr person's site (saw a cake, thought "hmm...could be a wreck") and sent it to the Cake Wrecks lady a few weeks ago.