Pre-Date Confidence Builder via all sortsa folks. Way funny.
French Performance Art (cont’d)
So Laurent Laurent was more “Laurent Laurent” than i ever could have imagined.
We met him in a very charming hole in the wall place in the 10th. Laurent Laurent is man of many talents, he writes, he dances, he puts on art shows. He also puts away his drinks with a vengeance. His gig right now is his group “Malsapé-Paris”, which is French slang for “Badly Dressed – Paris”.
He takes a quick and deep drag off his cigarette and leans in close to us,
“The question,” [pause for effect],
“is,” [another pause and a quick drag off his cigarette after which he tosses his head back dramatically and exhales],
“here, now, in the year 2001,” [excruciatingly longer pause for effect],
“Who is badly dressed?”
A smile creeps across my face. Since this entire conversation is in French i’m wondering if i am understanding it incorrectly. I’m hoping not because this is the best entertainment i’ve had in months. He continues on, with total seriousness. He explains that through this question, we can get to a deep philosophical understanding of the nature of man. Laurent Laurent’s thesis is that, in fact, no one can be called badly dressed anymore. Everyone has a valid style and statement with their clothes. Everyone has something to say. “What about people who try too hard?”, I ask, “I mean they come off pretty badly don’t you think?” His face lights up, “But no! There you can see the man’s weakness. [pause for effect] The weakness of man.” I’m sort of confused at the point, but i try to go along with it. “You see all styles are valid!” he exclaims. He finally admits that there is one exception, fanny packs. I can’t keep a straight face anymore. It’s a miracle that i haven’t openly started guffawing. So i’m attentive at the table with an enormous grin on my face.
Nils, on the other hand, is hanging on his every word. he keeps saying, “Yes! Yes! You are soooo right.” Much to my relief, i discovered later this was all an act. You see, Nils has this dream to be famous and rich without actually doing anything, except for being goofy. See his Stupid Dance to get an idea of this. So he’s convinced that if goofiness is going to get him to notoriety and riches, performance art is the medium that will expose his talents to the universe. I love Nils, btw. If anyone deserves riches from sheer goofiness, it’s him.
After trying to keep up with Laurent Laurent’s drinking, we’ve each put away 5 beers in under an hour and a half. I’m kind of tipsy at this point, but mostly i’m gassy – that’s a lot of carbonation for under an hour and a half. Our role in this piece tomorrow night is to carry a huge banner through the crowd while smiling in a Vanna White kind of way. The Palais du Tokyo is the spot in Paris this week, so Laurent Laurent must be doing something right to be invited to perform on the Friday night of it’s opening week.
After we parted, Nils and i walked for about 25 seconds, a safe distance away, and then we grabbed one another, the two of us just reeling with laughter. We kept going over parts of the conversation and cracking ourselves up. After we took our separate trains, i continued chuckling to myself the whole ride home. I must have looked like a loon. And all morning today, every time i think about it, i start giggling. My face hurts from all this laughing. Thank god for Laurent Laurent. I was having a really shitty week before last night.
So anyway the performance is tonight. I’m hoping someone will be documenting the spectacle, either in photos, or even better in video. I’ll be sure to give a full report.
Oh and here’s an interview with The Artist that i found – The google translation is in the link… hehehe
So i’m not really sure how this happened, but while in a line miles long for the opening the other night, Nils called some friend to ask if we could cut the line somehow and got in touch with some other friend of a friend (i think), and now the two of us are going to be in some performance art at the Palais de Tokyo tomorrow night. Yes, french performance art. If the line’s too long, might as well be in the show doing something ridiculous, no? The best part is the artists name is, get this, Laurent Laurent.
We’re meeting Laurent Laurent at a cafe to discuss the details tonight, planning is for amateurs apparently. It may involve ironing, lipstick, both or neither.
Stay tuned.
A fantastic story of how AppleScript helped recover a stolen iMac.
This is really heartwarming. It almost brought a tear to mine eyes..
via The Morning News
It’s foggy and grey today. A light cold rain outside. I’m thinking of other places.
I’m kind of wishing i was in a heated car driving down one of those single lane roads in the middle of California. I’m thinking of a stretch of road just south of Santa Cruz, past that weird town known as The Artichoke Center Of The World. You know the part of the drive where the blue sky is brilliantly set off by the bright green of endless rolling hills. Sometimes you can see the rain in the distance. You speed along on the wet road, in and out of sunshine. You’ve exhausted all your tapes so the radio’s tuned to a country station, the a only one that comes in, but it’s kind of good. You light a cigarette for your friend at the wheel. He nods a thanks as you light one for yourself. You’ve also exhausted conversation with your driving buddy, but the silence is a sweet one. And you wish this road with its sunshine and green hills would never ever end
IHT: Inflation Could Crash the Euro’s Party
No shit – the euro prices are all just a bit higher than the francs were: the magazine, the lunch, the baguette, the cheap red wine by the glass, the cover charge. Did they all think that no one would really notice? Bastards.
On the brighter side, Darleen’s put her Paris pics up which she’s charmingly named Missed You Something Eiffel.
Feeling slightly overwhelmed today by the multiplying financial attachments tagging along my ankles. In the abstract, the unmarried and childless twenties-ish urban lifestyle requires only rent, and the obligatory few dollars for booze, drugs, and clothes. Not so, friends. The student loan payments, the out of the blue rent hike, the cat expenses from across the ocean, the domain name renewal, the dsl… ok i can’t possibly go on with this list [sigh]. I am also feeling like i am getting jacked by everyone and anyone. You know that feeling?
And now that we’re bitching, my desk at work has possibly the worst feng shui imaginable. Directly behind me is the door, the printer, and the water cooler. There’s a constant stream of people poking their noses into my computer screen, making gulping noises centimeters from my ears, and reaching over my shoulder to borrow a stapler and shuffle their papers on my desk. Grrrr. That’s it, i am just going to start growling at them, like my cat does when she’s reached her boiling point on my refusal to let her sleep on my keyboard. Oh my high maintenance cat, how i miss your furry princesse attitude.
Ordinarily i’d take the evening to go home and stew; but now with my shiny new Acme Brand Social Life, i’m not going to stew, no sireeee. Going to the opening of the Palais de Tokyo [warning: this is one of those sites that decides to hijack your desktop]. Actually Paul was nice enough to send this NYTimes article which talks about the Palais and other wonders of Art making appearances in my adopted step-child of a city.
As 16h rolled around today (10am EST), i noticed the relative emptiness of my AIM buddylist. Naturally my first thought was that all my slacker friends had coincidentally overslept on the same day. That thought is pretty well within the realm of possibility. Later on today i saw my calendar and realized it was MLK jr. day.
A coupla days ago darleen and stephen and i listened to an old This American Life episode on Americans in Paris, and one of the segments was a really good one on a black American, Janet McDonald, who has permanently moved to Paris and her thoughts on the perceptions of race here as opposed to the good ol’ USA. It is a really good one. Even though you should brave real player and listen to it yourself, to sum up she talked about how here in Paris she’s seen as an American. Whereas in the States she is seen as black, first and foremost. As white as i am, i can concur that living here is the only time i’ve really felt like an American. But when i actually give it some thought, it’s not so much that i feel like an American. It’s really more that i am consistently reminded that i am *not French*. And all of these group labels, whether race, nationality, social descriptions are not really about what one is, but rather about what one isn’t. It takes a city of frenchies to make me feel American. It takes being the only white girl at a party to make me a white girl. It all is much more acute when we talk about race in the United States however; The history is so painful and the politics far from being resolved. In a white country, white is nothing; and black is black. It’s easy to see from any random conversation. Race becomes a descriptive adjective (without any racial meaning persay) only when the person is non-white.
Do French people here feel specifically French? I will have to ask around. Of course in Europe countries are much closer together and share more history, thus the need to define oneself against another group is much more present than in the States. I would imagine anyway. I was aware of being an outsider from all these groups at a really early age. Spending a formative early portion of my childhood in the whitest suburb ever, Orange County California, as an immigrant and a Jew had the potential to be destructively isolating. But my first grade self assimilated into the narrow society of suburban American elementary school children with a vengeance. This included consciously abandoning any connection to either my Turkish or Jewish culture. In a way it was even sort of fun. I would make up entire new histories for myself every so often. Sometimes i was born in the local hospital in Irvine. Sometimes it was names of hospitals i heard on daytime television. I don’t know why but we kids were obsessed with pointing out the hospitals we were born in. Once i said it was in Minnesota because i had just learned how to spell that word. I liked to say i was Roman Catholic because i thought just saying those big words made me seem refined and smart. Luckily we moved a lot so i could lie with impunity. Plus kids have either short memories or just short attention spans. No one ever caught me in my fabricated history.
This also all coincided with the years in which i was changing my name constantly. The name on my birth certificate is Nil Yvette Hillel. None of these names now appears on any of my IDs, credit cards, checks, or correspondence. Now i call myself nil from time to time (thus the title of my blog). It’s neat to be in Paris with my family here who knows me as nil and calls me by that name. When i hear it, it’s a good feeling. Like there’s someone who knows me. Which is also odd, because my family here doesn’t know me *at all*. In some ways i’d like to have nil back, but the weird part is that the acceptance of my given name coincided with the fact that i kind of just stopped caring what people called me all together. Nil is good, neille is just as good.
I remember the feeling of listening to politicians on television talking about The Immigration Problem, which in California translates pretty directly into The Mexican Problem. But i remember the feeling of fear i would get at these speeches as a child. This feeling that a certain important They didn’t want me here. And then i precisely remember a moment as a freshman in college listening to a similar speech on tv in the lounge of my dorm. I listened and disagreed in my little liberal mind about whatever it was he was saying. And it struck me that this old fear was gone. I had completely assimilated. I was just like everyone else. Of course there were always the explaining-to-my-friends-where-i-was-born conversations. But those only came up once or twice in the course of the friendship. It was right about then too, when i was fitting in easily with whatever group i wanted to fit in with, that i made a pretty conscious decision that i’d stay out of groups as a rule. Which i have. I float on the edges of certain circles, removing myself if i ever feel like i’m getting even slightly swallowed up in them. And it suits me just fine.
Even amidst the recent patriotic frenzy, i’m not entirely comfortable being described as an American. As with all of us, it’s a lot more complicated than that. But i recognize that this description is just another way of saying Not French, and hell if i can argue with that!
It’s brilliantly sunny outside and 54 Farenheit. Wow, upon walking outside to lunch, i caught myself in the middle of the thought, “It’s Spring”. Quickly i calculated the date as January 21 and my latitude as as 48. Spring? Here? Now? Not bloody likely. But it is an amazing day outside, and i may escape the office on the pretense of a Kit Kat, but really just go soak up some unseasonable spring.
In the meantime here are some great lil apps to make OSX a little bit more yours:
- Visage: Customize your your Boot Panel, Boot Strings, Login Panel, Login Screen Background, Dock Poof, and Dock Transparency. It’s cool really. And easy.
- ASM: Rocks. Gives you back the “Application Switcher Menu”, meaning the Hide This, Hide Others, Show All stuff in the top right corner menu (woo hoo). And will allow you to use a bunch of other OS 9 system goodies that OSX just threw away for no discernable reason. This thing is such a relief that if i weren’t running extremely low on US Dollars, i would most definitely donate to the dude. I swear.
- Sosumi: Replaces those irritating watery NyQuil pills that pass for buttons on OSX. I haven’t actually installed this one yet because of my fear of the command line. I should probably get over that. Then again, maybe i shouldn’t.
New Angeles Monthly, June 2008
Weekend America, March 30, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008
Nil by Mouth is written by Neille Ilel. Neille is a writer, reporter and user interface specialist in Los Angeles. If you think that's a lot, she's also got a host of meandering sidelines including improv comedy, tennis, cooking, drawing and thinking about learning to play the guitar.
Nil is her given name. It's a long story.
E-mail her here:
nil
@
neille
.com