What is this blog about?

  • The emigrant's destiny: The foreign country has not become home, but home has become foreign.

    --Alfred Polger (d. 1955), Der Emigrant und die Heimat

    Emigranten-Schicksal: Die Fremde ist nicht Heimat geworden. Aber die Heimat Fremde.

    Until 2007, I lived in Paris for many years, and had a blog there called Rue Rude.

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Latest celebrity sighting

  • David Harbour from "Revolutionary Road" at Jerry's Diner, trying to pay

I've heard of it!

QUI ESTIS?

05 January 2009

Finis

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11 December 2008

Bailout

Bailout

02 December 2008

Sunset

Sunrise

27 October 2008

Overgrown

Stopzaziepooflickrs The election is coming up and for the first time in many years, I am fully involved in the political life around me. Not an observer, not an outsider, not an expat far away-- it's more exciting than I remember.

I don't miss Paris. It's a big gray city without the mountains and ocean and wildlife I see around me here. It's morose, it's rainy, it's rude. I don't even miss Europe most of the time.

Maybe, though, if I thought I couldn't go back.... Or if I were there, now, in a cafe with a steaming expresso in front of me, on the boulevard Saint-Germain.....

I don't have much to say any more. You may have noticed. I've been gone almost two years. I'm no longer an expert on Paris or anything else.  It's time to stop writing as an expat-come-home. When I go back to Paris, I'll return to Rue Rude.

Goodbye, old friends!

23 October 2008

Honestly, who could resist? Awww!

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From Colleen to the L.A. Times. The dog's name is Booker.

18 October 2008

Halloween is coming

And that means....

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... dog costumes!

02 October 2008

Sarah Palin's Facebook page

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18 September 2008

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

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This is the driest year since 1877 in Los Angeles. I don't remember a drop of rain the whole summer. Los Angeles is a desert, and real clouds in the sky are occasion for rejoicing. Yet the flowers are still blooming everywhere, and armies of gardeners appear at dawn in the rich parts of town.

"Don't waste that water," said C darkly as I let the water run. "It comes from 800 miles away."

15 September 2008

Drinking

Connoisseurs

In France, it is fair to say, I never went to dinner at someone's house without being served wine. But a lot of Californians don't drink. Maybe it's all the driving you have to do here after dinner.

There is a reassuring sameness to a French meal, known to all the French, high or low-- so that any Frenchman feels comfortable in the most exquisite restaurant: first,  nuts or hors-d'oeuvres in the salon with an apéritif , then an appetizer at the table, then the main course, then salad, cheese, dessert; coffee. Then perhaps a little chocolate.

Everything bien arrosé, of course, with wine, whiskey or champagne.

The rules are off in California. So many people don't drink at all or are the designated driver. A lot of young people only touch beer. And instead of having white and red wine on hand, you have to serve several different varieties of soft drink, making sure to have diet Pepsi AND diet Coke!

11 September 2008

The fast lunch

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"Can you explain about lunchtime?" I asked the dean at the first parents' meeting.

"Well, there's no actual lunch hour, but they can usually grab a bite between classes. And of course everyone has at least one free period a day."

"How long do they have between classes?"

"Ten minutes."


Today's quotation

  • Actor Bruce Campbell: If you really analyze it, all the A movies are B movies....If you get bitten by a radioactive spider and dress up like a spider and fly around-- that's not only a B movie-- that's a 1950s B movie.

    Interviewer: So Sam Raimi went on to make, uh, ...the three big Spiderman movies. And you have a cameo role in all of them, right?

    Actor Bruce Campbell: Now, when you say "cameo," I would challenge that. I would go with "pivotal."

    --Actor Bruce Campbell on NPR, 28 February 2009

Le petit aperçu d'Ailleurs

  • As of April 15th, all new cars in France will sport a new yellow license plate, which will no longer include the familiar two-digit number of the département at the end. (Paris is 75.) There was so much protest at the disappearance of regional identification (as in the U.K.) that the new license plate now includes a regional logo, like the black-and-white stripes of Brittany. The owner of the car can choose which region to identify with; it doesn't have to be the one he lives in.

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