I met a couple of Kiwis in Orlando that had, at the time, took the train to Orlando from Pennsylvania (or somewhere north of Orlando). The Kiwis were Amy and Eammon and they were in Pennsylvania because they played a set with their friend from Brooklyn, whom they stayed with for three months. Per chance, they were going to head up to Brooklyn on the 22nd, a week before they were heading back to New Zealand. Before I left Orlando to Brooklyn, we exchanged information and made plans to hang out.
Christmas day came around and since Uncle Russ, Aunt Rose-marie, and I didn't really have any plans initially, the kiwi's and I our hang out time to be during what could be "Chrismas dinner." It was absolutely wonderful! The three of us spoke of sociological related subjects , each other, ate a splendid meal, and to top it off... We drank tea and watched Home Alone 2... On Chrismas. Eammon, Amy, and I were pretty much just into it for the violent part of the film when the kid, Kevin, sets traps and such for the two villains. I never before thought of how incredibly... Uh, violent(?) the film is. I mean, violent in the way that... Fatal! That's the word I was looking for. Fatal. Most of the things in that movie have to do with head wounds. Marv (I think) is one of the villain characters who gets most of the butt end of the violence. There's one scene in the film where he gets hit-in the forehead- with four to five bricks from the top of a four story New York City house! One brick would kill someone. One! Then later in the film, he gets electrocuted by a welding power supply. I've welded before, those things put out enough volts to melt metal... because that's what welding does.
I didn't have a chance to hang out with them again before they left but it's fine. We both put due time in and I'll get to visit with them if I go to New Zealand or if they need a place to crash in Seattle.
About a week before New Years I sent a letter to Jona Bechtolt (
YACHT) asking if he new much about the New Years event him and Claire were playing. It was called We Love 2009 at a club ballroom called the Tapis Rouge hosted by the art organization called We Love Art. Jona sent me a reply and asked if I would like to be put onto the guest list, an offer which I totally took up. I headed to the club ballroom in a more African district of Paris (fun fact: Paris also has a more "latin" district but this is not so prominent. Not really the kind of Latin American "latin" but more of something zoned onto a map). The area looked a bit sketch at first but this was on account of the street just having poor lighting, a lot of it coming from the tiny shops and corner stores on the side of buildings.
I was in the 'guest list line' waiting to head into the ballroom. I started talking to some really nice trio of french named Nicole (guy), Sarah, and Julianne. Nicole didn't know how to speak English that well but he could understand it easily. Him and Julianne were an item and Julianne also does quite well with English. Sarah didn't really speak English until we started talking but before she was, I guess, shy. Hot as a fox, as I will add.
The three of them were my friends for part of the night until I met up with Jona and Claire. My new friends didn't really want to see YACHT so they instead told me to meet up with them later (somehow I found them in a crowd of 600 dancing people). I said "You should really watch this! They're good!" but it wasn't too convincing apparently.
So Claire, Jona, and I started conversing for about five minutes before they had to go through with their set. This was followed by an overhead projector connection problem, a hardware failure on the sound system, and people not really dancing. I was a bit disappointed in the crowd but I think they were dressed to not dance too hard while boozed; so I danced for them instead. Oh did I dance. At that point also I had a cough for a week that I was combatting with throughout the night.
(I danced so hard)
After Jona and Claire played we just hung out. I had a total blast with them. Claire and I spoke a lot while Jona would go on quests to find a bathroom, water, a humpback whale, tokens (to buy booze with). All the while, there is this very tastefully dressed burlesque woman striking different slow motion poses, rotating on a velvet red couch, in front of an video projection of betty page and boob shots... In front of Claire and I while we talk about... Life. It was splendid. The three of us went downstairs to watch their DJ friend do his thing.
The-night-was-fucking-blast.
Since then I've been just walking around Paris. It's been two days since New Years but it seems longer. When I arrived here I met a group of kids from Amsterdam that absolutely loved me. We spent the earlier portion of the 31st walking around and such. I'd rather leave that for some verbal storytelling instead.
Today visited Musee de Lourve. I spent three and a half hours in there walking around and looking at all of the French and Italian paintings, greek statues, a 80 ton vas (Actual wight may vary. It did, with no exaggeration, look 80 tons), Arabic artifacts, Egyptian artifacts, and the architecture of the museum. I may not have gone if it were not for the help of a very wonderful gay man, Hugo, who told me that I should visit the museum today. I knew I wanted to go to it, just not where it was. Apparently I ended up there the other day with the Norwegians without realizing it. The only difference was that it was beautifully sunny weather outside today.
I saw all of the David paintings (maybe not all of them), some work from Picasso, wrote down the titles of some original musical compositions, and to top it off: I saw the Mona Lisa.
That's right, I saw the Mona Lisa. I think it would look better though if it wasn't surrounded by people-deflecting velvet rope, a fifteen foot buffer, a layer of protective glare inducing (maybe bullet proof) glass. I recall the lady who took my ticket told me not to take any photos of the painting since it's totally not cool but I don't think that stopped the rest of the crowd (consisting of sixty five). I guess I could have taken a photo but I don't know what the fuck that would of accomplished. I mean, you can buy posters of the damn thing... plus I didn't want to be disrespectful by taking a photo.
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Overall, the stereotypes of the French being pretentious and hiding their knowledge of the english language, I'm throwing out the fucking window. I can't prove the ladder of the two but the pretension thing I'm just not getting. Of course I cannot speak the language (yet) but all I can say is the French people are fucking nice. It's just a language barrier that's been the problem for me, and I'm starting to think that's mostly the problem. I have found, however, if I ask someone for help, if they don't know English, the just might know Spanish instead, and that's when I get really cool. Of course I cannot speak for the rest of the world whom have interacted with my fair locals but they seem very helpful. I'm going to delve more into this when I get the language down but there seems to be this sense of politeness that they show to each other kind of like they're part of one big sweet family. Provided I've been here only four days, I cannot be so certain about any of the above stated but I do know this: I like the French... a lot.
The women are all cute too. I would say in ≈90% of my encounters. Especially girl at the hostel reception desk.
I'm excited to see Ryland on the fifth, a couple of days from now, and now I've also gotten a place to stay with someone. The hostel started to become depressing to me a couple of days ago so I decided to crash with someone around Boulevard de Magenta near the Jacques Bonsergent metro station and I'll be there before I leave to Glasgow on the 6th or 7th. It may be a relief to get into Brit-land when I can communicate with people a bit better. I haven't had a stimulating face-to-face conversation since Jona and Claire but before that it wasn't for a while. I think if I don't have something like that, I don't do quite so well.
In any case, Paris is fabulously well dressed and most of I've encountered everyone is nice.
Except for that douche bag at the hostel reception desk.
