Best shoes! Ever!

I don't like object worship, fetishism for possessions or the tendency to turn compulsive shopping into a noble pursuit. But I do like well-crafted things, especially shoes. Good craftsmanship is not enough, however. And being beautiful is not enough in a shoe. A shoe has to be more than tolerable or comfortable to wear. It has to be heavenly to walk in. I walk a lot; I enjoy the feeling of walking and like to be conscious of what my feet are feeling when I walk.

This may be why I have never been a fan of super high heels. They are uncomfortable to walk in. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Women wear high heels because they think this will attract men. Wearing high heels is a desperate act. At least in my opinion. So there.

The rant above is just a lead-in for the photo of my new shoes. They are made by CYDWOQ (see video). They have a slight negative heel, but any resemblance with "earth shoes" ends there. Remember earth shoes? My dentist and I were laughing about them today -- both of us are old enough to have worn them and dumb enough to have bought an original pair. Man, the pain! The tendonitis! And what ugly suckers they were!

Compare earth shoes





with my CYDWOQs:

New tenant, new lamp, broken dryer

I decided yesterday was about time to get ready for Mathilde, who will be living in our mother-in-law apartment for several months as she does an internship at Alliance française. Mathilde is 22 and from Perpignan, France. I started my clean-up with a load of laundry and immediately broke the dryer. I didn't do anything special to break it; it just started making a really strange noise, like someone had dumped about 15 dollars worth of quarters inside. In fact, this was my first thought: that a pocket (not mine, mind you) containing an extraordinary amount of change had not been emptied before the article of clothing it was attached to was thrown in the washing machine. That would have been great, in retrospect. No such luck. So the next thing I did was take out two items with zippers, in the vain hope that the noise was coming from some innocent metallic object and not some vital inner mechanism. In the meantime, I should add, I had put a very expensive, very loved pair of trousers in the wash on the "delicate" hand wash setting. I was petrified they would shrink or lose their exquisite shape. I took the extra precaution of reducing the number of rotations on the spin cycle. I got so distraught over the impending dryer disaster (Month of August! Repair guy on vacation! Intern coming from France in a week!) that I wasn't really paying attention to the wash cycle in progress. When the washer stopped I tried the door but it wouldn't open. Thinking the cycle was done, I turned the setting to "off" and then waited a minute before opening the door. When I did, a ton of water came spilling out onto the floor. Water, water everywhere! That's right, the reason the door would not open was that the cycle was still in progress you idiot! I was so dumbfounded and distracted by the dryer problem that I just held my trousers in my hand and looked on as the water continued to spill onto the floor and my shoes.
The important thing is that my trousers look fine -- they have their same basic shape and color. They were pretty water logged, though, since the spin cycle had not been completed. So I wrung them out as delicately as possible, which is actually impossible, and now they are hanging to dry for the next three days....

After I hung them up, I did the most sensible thing I could do: I decided to put off the apartment clean-up for a day and took the wet clothes from the broken dryer up to the coin-op laundromat. Neko and I went for a walk while they were drying, and we happened to go by Click! Design That Fits, a really great little shop in West Seattle owned by a couple that makes beautiful jewelry (Smersch, check 'em out). My favorite lamp in the universe, which I have wanted to buy ever since I first saw it there at least two years ago, was beaming at me from within. It was on sale. Finally! So I bought the last one in stock and ordered another. The lamp is so beautiful. I was an avid lamp collector when I lived in France. I love lamps, beautiful lamps. What makes a lamp beautiful? It's a mystery. The shade on this one is called "hot dog". Ain't that cool?
It looks great by the side of the bed.





Today I got throught the big clean-up, which included taking scary things out of the refrigerator and freezer. Caroline left some food items behind, thinking they would get eaten. I could not tell what any of them were. I also sent a couple of huge spiders packing. I vacuumed the whole place. Now it looks really cozy, don't you think?

Have a nice day!

I can see clearly now

I finally got a new pair of glasses. I love them. They're kind of ugly betty type glasses, with frames designed by one of France's emerging talents in the field. I got them at Eyes on Fremont. This is one of my favorite small businesses in Seattle: hip and knowledgeable salespeople, all of whom are wearing groovy glasses with a smile; a wonderful but not overwhelming selection; terrific after-sales service; consistently high quality product, selected with an EYE for aesthetics. Sure, you'll pay less at Costco or Sears, as my ophthamologist said; but you won't find the same groovy frames or get a pair of glasses crafted with the same care.

It's amazing how the world lights up and comes into focus when you have a pair of glasses adapted to your eyesight. What I love most about this latest pair is the coverage they offer. I took my oldest pair of glasses in with me because I had broken them while they served as a replacement for the lost pair (boo hoo on that; they were great designer frames by YSL that I bought just two years ago from another great small business in Paris). They're about 25 years old and I got them at one of the Lissac outlets in Paris. Here's a historical detour for anyone interested in the history of eyewear:

Histoire
Georges Lissac crée son premier magasin, rue Dauphine avec deux de ses frères, à Paris, en 1919. Le premier « mégastore optique » ouvre,rue de Rivoli en 1938. Cette succursale devient le siège social de la SARL Frères Lissac créée en 1931. Ce magasin demeure aujourd’hui encore le plus grand magasin optique d’Europe.
Précurseur en matière de communication dans l’histoire de l’optique, Georges Lissac lance, en 1932 la première campagne publicitaire de l’histoire de l’optique avec le slogan : « Des lunettes toujours parfaites à prix honnêtes ».
Précurseur, Georges Lissac propose un examen gratuit de la vue quand, à l’époque, la majeure partie des consommateurs choisit ses verres en les essayant.

Anyway, when the guy at Eyes on Fremont saw me old frames, he went nuts. Wow, he said, those are really back in style right now. I had figured this out myself given the number of hipsters who have commented on them in the past two months of so. He suggested I have them made into prescription sunglasses.

The world looks clear now and Puget Sound was like glass last night, so we went for a little pre-dinner kayak ride We put in (that's what the pros say) at Salty's and went out to inspect the seal raft. No seals last night! But the air was so clear; there was no haze at all. Every line and detail, every nuance of color in the downtown skyline stood out like an image in a viewfinder. Okay, maybe that was because of my new glasses, whatever. We went down to Jack Block Park to see if the seals were hanging out there. They weren't, but we had fun photographing barge 255. Then we headed back toward Salty's and popped open our beers offshore. I'm not a beer drinker, but there is something so satisfying about sitting in a kayak and drinking a beer while gazing alternately at the revelers on the deck at Salty's and the Seattle skyline.

Tuesday music

Piers Faccini

Birthday Month (July 10-August 10) Winds Down

This deserves a pause for a nice long Ohm.....

This action-packed month has included unexpected travel to foreign lands and a spontaneous hike along the Dosewallops River. Most importantly, it began with my birthday gift to myself: 20 yoga classes at 8 Limbs in West Seattle.




One evening while in Paris I was rushing along my usual back-street routes to get somewhere when I came upon this group of yoga practitioners, finishing their class en plein air.

I stopped to take a couple of pictures. The location is Place des Pères, which is just in front of the stunning and secretive Basilique Notre-Dame des Victoires, which lies hidden behind the flashier and more famous tourist magnet known as Place des Victoires.




The last time I hiked the Dosewallops I was on my way to climb Mt. Anderson. That was about 35 years ago...

Proust au musée des lettres et manuscrits à Paris

Le bonheur est au 222 boulevard St-Germain jusqu'à fin août.
Dépêchez-vous!

Time flies

As we biked along the Sammamish River Trail yesterday, I was thinking about how amazing it really is - when you think about it - that it is possible to fly 5,004 miles (Paris - Seattle via the great northern route) in just ten hours. Last Sunday, just a week ago, I was trudging through the Buttes des Chaumont park with my cellphone in hand, trying to find the exact location of the birthday party for Hanna, who just turned two. Noel and I finally managed to bump into eachother, though it seemed to be due more to random luck than technology and reconnoitering skills.

I stopped to snap this photo on the way:




Here she is, the birthday girl:

Le Basilic

I hope to get to the story behind these photos soon. But work is calling and jet lag is slowing me down.

My friend Monique sold her apartment in Paris last year after accepting a generous severance package from her employer and deciding to trade the stress of being a high-powered executive for one of France's largest corporations for the stress of meeting a payroll and running a restaurant. It seems to be working for her! And I worked for her too, for a couple of days last week.

Cathleen Vella

Unfortunately, I learned this morning that Facebook is a very effective way to communicate bad news as well as good. My dear friend Cathleen Vella of Paris, France passed away just now. I got a facebook message from a mutual friend, Tizzy, informing me that Cathleen was dying and had just a few hours to live. I was frantically scouring facebook, looking for a way to get more information without bothering Cathleen's husband Pierre or her son Pascal. I noticed that Cathleen's status was "on line", which I found odd. We had exchanged messages a couple of weeks ago -- when are you coming to Paris, she asked. Soon, I replied. Not soon enough I am sorry to say.

Then, just now in fact, Pascal sent a message to all of Cathleen's facebook friends, announcing her death.

You will be missed, Cathleen Flaherty Vella. Your good humor and love of life never failed you, despite being tested over and over again. I was practically in despair yesterday because both of my computers were not working due to a software glitch. Sometimes we lose perspective about what really matters, and adjustments are in order.

Cathleen, how brave you were to get on my sailboat!

En grève contre BP

J'ai décidé d'arrêter de m'occuper de ce blog et d'écrire sur les fait divers tant que BP n'aura pas réussi à régler ce petit "pépin" qui fout la merde au niveau planétaire. Fuck you, BP, et vous les autres pratiquants du capitalisme sauvage et ravageur. Le capitalisme, j'ai entendu dire un jour à la radio, il n'a jamais était si moribond ni si agressif. Mais oui, c'est ça le drame.

La bonne nouvelle (voir article du Monde) à mi-teinte est que le cours de bourse du titre BP est tombé au plus bas! 36 centimes d'euro par action seulement... youpee! Mais derrière les chiffres il a (hélàs) des hommes, et parmi ceux-ci les actionnaires individuels de BP, sans parler des fonds de pension qui paient les retraites de beaucoup de gens modestes avec les rendements de leurs investissements dans les marchés des capitaux... quel merdier cette marée noire, quel merdier le capitalisme sauvage.

Et moi et moi et moi dans tout ça? Je fais grève!

SIFF 2010 - Mon Palmarès à Moi

I've seen four films in the SIFF line-up so far. One I've already indicated; the three others are Amer (Franco-Belge), Le père de mes enfants (Belgian) and, last night, Farsan, a delightful Swedish comedy. Farson would never make the Cannes line-up, simply because Cannes seems to have something against comedies. We went with a friend and the three of us laughed our heads off at all the delightful silliness. At the same time, Farsan has its genuinely touching moments. The guy who plays Aziz makes the film. He's a lovable but totally invasive parent who hasn't really moved on from his wife's death and who as a result is making things hard on his son and the son's wife. They are secretly adopting a child while she pretends to be pregnant. The film is in Swedish and was filmed in one of those lovely, sleepy towns that dot the Swedish landscape. Watching it, you long to move to Sweden and work in a bicycle repair shop for peanuts. Seeing Sweden as I remember it made the film special for me; my two movie companions had never been to Sweden and thoroughly enjoyed the movie anyway. One of them wanted to move there, right away.
Amer and Le père de mes enfants are more sober films. The French don't do Swedish comedies. They do comedies, but that's another matter. Both of these films are Belgian productions; both are in French. In the case of Amer, filmed in the south of France (near Eze, it looks like), the language is not that important because there is not much dialogue. The film is a hommage to the Italian giallo style of the 60s. I saw it with my friend D. Her first words when the lights went up were "that was the worst movie I have ever seen". I'm not so sure. There was something compelling about the way it was filmed. Three key moments in the life of one person - as a girl, an adolescent and a young woman. A giallo is a half thriller, half slasher film. This was more slasher than thriller, though the explicit violence came only in the final sequence. If you watch the film as reality, it doesn't work. But as the developing fantasy life of the main character viewed from inside her head, it works much better. The music is creepy and funny at the same time: Sergio Leone meets Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. The camera work and colors reminded me of a cross between David Lynch and Bunuel. On a visual and auditive level, the film works. That's the only way to see it.



Le père de mes enfants was filmed in and around Paris, except for a brief sequence in Italy. Paris was the character in the movie I most wanted to watch. Based on a true story, the film is both warm and sad. It mostly works, though at times it seemed about to veer off topic. The three daughters of the over-extended film producer are wonderful and relaxed. In the case of both Farsan and Le père de mes enfants, the lighting and actors are natural. Such a refreshing contrast with Hollywood big productions! The sixty-year-olds in Farsan look their age and it is wonderful to see. The actors in Le père de mes enfants are not overly-made-up or facelifted. Everyone just looks like a person. Vive le cinéma!

Le bonheur est sur les Champs (Elysées)

Anyone who has spent any time on the Champs-Elysées (la plus belle avenue du monde) will love this transformation.

Mom and me

After losing my expensive and really beautiful prescription sunglasses on Christmas Day, I have now lost the expensive and really beautiful Yves Saint Laurent glasses I bought in Paris two summers ago. The sunglasses are gone forever, having been accidently thrown out. Okay, they were inside a bag. As for the more recently lost pair, they are somewhere in my house. I just can't find them. So I have taken to wearing old glasses. The pair I was wearing last night is about 20 years old. I only wore them when I went to movies (I never drove when I lived in France and didn't even own a car). They are really hilarious. I actually love wearing them because it makes me feel like a secretary in a 60's sitcom. The photo was taken by my sister Carolyn; the occasion was the wedding reception of my cousin Suzi's daughter Tina; the place was the Rainier Golf and Country Club.

The copy and paste mentality

When I taught at the super-selective HEC (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales), a French grande école that trains many of France's future business elites and captains of industry, I often had my students keeps a journal in English so they would get writing practice. I told them they could write on any subject whatsoever, but sometimes suggested topics for open-ended essays.

I would collect the journals a couple of times during the term and read/grade them. To my surprise, one student had copied text from Time magazine word for word, passing it off as his own reflections about the problem of immigration in France (a topic I had given). I did not read Time magazine regularly, but just happened to have read this very article. I immediately recognized the words, not to mention the vast improvement in this student's written English. From upper intermediate to publishable in one fell swoop!

When I confronted the student, he denied having copied the text. So I showed him the original. He did not seem too embarrassed and eventually explained to me that he needed a good grade in my class to get an internship his dad had arranged for him in New York the following summer. The end justified the means, in his mind at least.

This happened in the mid-80's, before the ubiquity of the Internet. Today, it is so easy to copy and paste and the amount of material available for the taking is so vast that plagiarism has become a major problem. Le Monde has published an interesting article on the subject (this post's title links to it). Apparently, plagiarism detection software has been developed and a string of more than six identical words with an existing published document gets picked up and flagged.

This paragraph caught my attention:

Mais pour Hélène Maurel-Indart, si le plagiat prend de l'ampleur, ce n'est pas seulement à cause d'Internet. "Bien sûr, avec les ordinateurs, il y a la banalisation du geste copier-coller." Un clic suffit, plus besoin de recopier manuellement des pages d'ouvrage. "Mais il y a également l'augmentation du nombre d'entrées en master, avec des étudiants qui ne sont pas toujours capables de valoriser leurs informations."

But for Hélène Maurel-Indart, the Internet is not the only reason plagiarism is becoming more widespread. "Obviously, with computers copy-and-paste has become a banal gesture." It just takes one click; manually recopying the pages of the work is no longer necessary. "But there are also more students pursuing master's degrees, and some of them are not always able to valorize their information."

That is the crux of the problem, I think. With the Internet, one quickly realizes that one's thoughts on a given work or author or movement or moment in history or sociological phenomenon or whatever have probably been expressed by someone else already. Blissful ignorance of one's precursors is no longer an option. The challenge lies in acknowledging them and building on what they have already written. But what if what they have already written tallies with what you think? Just agreeing is so lame. Just going out and finding the words of others who agree or disagree is easy. The world of scholarship has not yet figured out how to deal with the copy-and-paste mindset. Judging from my experience at the University of Washington, higher education functions pretty much the same way it did 30 years ago. The anxiety of influence may have intensified, that's all.

Ten pounds lighter, ten years younger

They say the right haircut can make a gal look younger and lighter. It sure did the trick for Neko, who has just come back from the groomer. She'll thank me for it this summer.

Before


After

Just a really nice song

L'inconnu du métro

Merci à Philippe Colin et sa cellule de dégrisement sur France Inter, que j'écoute en différé grâce au podcast, de m'avoir fait découvrir l'incomparable Marie Dinkle et son blog, l'inconnu du métro. Le concept est très simple, comme le style d'écriture de Marie. Avec son ton juste et léger, elle nous montre qu'on peut aimer autrui sans passer pour quelqu'un de candide.

A propos de l’inconnu du métro
Vous vous demandez qui est cet inconnu assis en face de vous qui regarde par la fenêtre. Chaque fois que vous tentez de regarder dans sa direction vous croisez son regard. Gêné vous baissez les yeux. On ne dévisage pas les gens. Il se demande la même chose. Pourtant vous ne le reverrez jamais. C’est l’inconnu du métro.

Marie repère puis aborde l'inconnu du jour, mène sa petite enquête auprès de sa proie consentante, prend une photo de cette dernière et met le tout sur son blog (il suffit de cliquer sur le titre pour le visiter). Par example, ici c'est Mauricette. Pour connaître son histoire, et celle de tant d'autres inconnus, suivez le lien et consultez sur place. A déguster sans modération.



Il paraît que le blog sera bientôt traduit en anglais. Personnellement, je ne vois pas l'intérêt mais why not?

En tout cas, continuez Marie Dinkle. On vous aime beaucoup!

My career in advertising

The pay is pretty good.
I created the tagline for the Sanctuary advertising that will be visible with every film shown at this year's Seattle International Film Festival. It was the best ten minutes I ever spent. My friend D is one of the SIFF sponsors this year and, as a result, in addition to the free advertising, we get free passes. These are cool things you wear around your neck, and they get you in for free to any film you want to see, any time.

The festival starts in about two weeks, but there are press screenings going on now and we get to go to those too. Today I actually went to a movie at noon! It was a French film, Les Beaux Gosses. Bizarrely, the title was translated as French Kissers. Most unfortunate. Not a great film, but not bad either.

A cross between a tranche de vie and a series of vignettes.

No time to blog!

The best part? As I was leaving Pacific Place, I noticed that Anne Taylor was having a sale on dresses, so I walked in to have a look. Ten minutes later, I walked out with two for the price of one. I am not a shopper; I get no pleasure out of agonizing and lingering. These dresses are perfect; one will be just right for my cousin's daughter's wedding in three weeks. I just need to find the right shoes. Clementine will have them.

If you go to SIFF, look for my masterpiece.

Sanctuary: a unique place for life's special events.

It is just right with the artwork, which I can't post here for some reason. Go to SIFF and you'll see it.

Survival mode

I just wanted to reassure those who have been wondering that I have not fallen into a black hole. April is the cruellest month for me in terms of work. This year, as last year, it is proving a challenge to pursue school and get through a mountain of day-job work at the same time, not to mention.... all the other stuff. Had the Charlotte Gainsbourg show at the Crocodile been worth anywhere near the price of the ticket, I would have let y'all know. But alas, I should have listened to my instincts. Like her mother, Charlotte has no voice to speak of. And unfortunately, she does not have her late father's song-writing or musical ability. But the pre-dinner at Le Pichet was excellent, and so was the show at the Showbox the same night, where we had back-stage passes. Nice to have someplace to go when the place where you are disappoints!
Now it is back to the subsistence life: métro, boulot, dodo. Mostly boulot. Merde!

I have a photo I took in Iceland on my desk right now, just beneath my computer screen. It predates this week's eruption (both the taking of the photo and my decision to put it on my desk). Maybe I'll scan it and post it some day. I am sorry about all the stranded travelers but excited about the eruption. I love volcanic eruptions! When I lived on Rue des Ecoles in Paris I belonged to a gym just around the corner. There was a famous volcanologue who used to box there every morning at 7 am. A volcanologue! When I visited Iceland, I was struck by many things, not the least of which is this: the ground trembles ever so slightly, all the time. You realize pretty quickly that the place could blow at any moment. You begin to understand Bjork's music.