LA en vie

Sarah Palin's Facebook page

Sarah Palin: Cauchemar ou réalité?

The French won't like her.

That could help her.

*Thanks, Richmond Rambler, for the link!  As pointed out by Deb, the photo is faked. I honestly think it shows her personality, though.

Visite de Boosh à Paris

Tow trucks were taking away cars all along avenue Henri-Martin.

"Is there a marathon?" I asked the driver.

"Non, c'est Bouche qui arrive," said the driver. "They've towed all the cars along his route from the airport to the Élysées palace. The Champs-Élysées is completely bouché*, hein hein!"

*traffic-jammed

Return to normal

Paris

On the way to Saint-Germain, my taxi was passed by about twenty navy blue vans of the CRS (riot police).  The CRS inside looked relaxed; it wasn't at all like the time of the big riots of November 2005. At the Luxembourg Gardens, we saw a lot of gendarmes, looking bored as they set up blockades.

"What's happening?" I asked my driver. "Who is demonstrating this time? It was the handicapés on Saturday."

"And the retired people. I think it's les profs today," the Moroccan driver said. "There's always somebody." He was a "rightist" and said the only politician he ever liked was Villepin, but that Villepin had been too decent a man for politics and was obliged to retire.

I asked if he had ever been in a manif himself. "The big taxi one, at the Gare de Lyon?" I asked.

"Yes, of course," he said."We have to defend our rights."

On my way home later, I took a bus. It was hard to find the bus stop because the buses were all following different routes to detour around the blocked-off area. "Les lycéens protestent," I heard someone say. The lycée students are up in arms about a reduction in the number of teachers.

"Ils s'amusent, but we have to get home," said someone else.

On the radio, I heard a union leader predict that this May (the 40th anniversary of the major riots of 1968) will be "hot!

"Bath of crowd" at Galeries Lafayette

Paris

The kids wanted to buy souvenirs, so we foolishly headed off to Galeries Lafayette on a Saturday.  The grands magasins are places that remind you of the saying, "L'enfer, c'est les autres." Besides the loudspeaker announcements (nonstop) in Japanese and Russian, there is always some special sale going on: the Trois Jours J or the "Seven Days of Gold" or the "Bazar de l'Inde" or the Fêtes de fin d’année.

I believe the Galeries is now the biggest department store in the world (it includes a Lafayette Maison, Lafayette Sport, Lafayette Hommes, and the main store, and that's just at the main location). Next to it is another huge store, Printemps (including separate stores for Printemps Hommes and Printemps Maison). During the big sales, during the holidays, all summer, and on weekends, you have to push through crowds to get on and off the escalator, and sometimes you must wait in line three times to get your merchandise-- once to get the salesperson's attention, once to pay, and once to go back to the saleperson and pick up your things. So why go there? Because it's got everything you are looking for. But you are likely to  come out drained and bad-tempered. And everyone else there just wishes you'd go away, too.

I hadn't set foot there for probably two years. I had warned the kids that Saturday was not the ideal day to go, but they reassured me that it would be fun. They all wanted to see this great sight of Paris.

When we got there, not only were there more people than I dreamed of, but there were buses parked in front of the building , all with placards in their windows reading "Ni Pauvres Ni Soumis" and all from the provinces. It was a demonstration. As I later found out, it was a demonstration of handicapped people and their supporters from all over France, demanding a "decent" payment-- at the moment, according to one placard in this picture, handicapped people who can't work have to try to live on 628 € a month.

But their supporters in Galeries Lafayette were not in wheelchairs. I am not sure why they were in the store in a huge group, wearing green pinnies with the slogan and being shepherded on and off the escalators like children, but maybe it was to go to the cafeteria on the top floor, or the bathrooms, or the 9th-floor* roof terrace where there is a lovely (and free) view of Paris.

It was what the French call a bain de foule, or bath of crowd.

*8th floor French

Back to Paris

Paris

I am back in Paris. It is cold and rainy. What do you expect? Tomorrow it may even snow.

John McCain is here too. But he's not too popular among the French people I talk to. "He's too warlike," said one ("Il est trop guerrier"). 

"He's another Bush," said another.

"So, who do the French like for President?" I asked the butcher. He was the last one working in the shop; the others had all gone home, leaving  him to take care of the retardataires buying lamb at the last minute.

"Les français aiment Hillary [Eelahree]," he said. "She is very brillante, she has good relations with Europe,  she reassures us."

The other people in the shop,  two old ladies and a man, nodded their agreement.

Sarkozy on YouTube

Sarkozy appears drunk after a meeting with Putin at the G8 summit last week (those Russians!) and the French press mentions nothing, but the Belgians have a field day (and then have to apologize; apparently the Président does not drink at all). Better watch this quickly before it disappears from YouTube....

The Bush supporter

The Griffith Park fire is out but now there is another fire on Catalina Island, which I can sometimes see off in the distance. Last night, before it got too dark, you could actually see the fire on the ridges. Now the horizon is covered with white smoke even though it is a clear blue day.

Yesterday a workman came into my house chuckling to himself. "Around here I get a lot of people honking at me and giving me the finger," he said.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Oh, because I have a Bush-Cheney sticker on my truck. This is not exactly the neighborhood for that." (I live in West L.A.) "But I ask you, why is the economy so good? Why is there such low unemployment? I made two bets that Bush and Cheney would win the last election, but the other guys refused to pay up. Even though we only bet one dollar!"

"Why not? That's not very honest of them," I said.

"Well, because I told them I wanted the dollar in pennies, glued inside a frame with the caption 'I LOST,'" he said.

Quotation of the day: makeup for men

Main Street, Santa Monica, handsome young guy with four-day beard, to two pretty girls: "That's what my makeup artist tells me."

(Maybe I should recognize him!)

Favorite headline of the day: Bush AIDS Abstinence Appointee Quits State Dept. In Hooker Scandal

Pasadena contraband: anti-Bush countdown clock

We were having lunch with my glamorous aunt in a fashionable Pasadena restaurant. The people at the next table were discussing the Magna Carta.

"Look what what one of my liberal buddies gave me," said my aunt.

It's a digital Bush Countdown Clock, measuring "Time until Bush goes:" in months, days, hours and minutes. "Our national nightmare will soon be over."

She looked all around and lowered her voice as she stowed it away in her purse. "I can't be seen with this in Pasadena," she said as she put it away in her purse. "It's a very conservative town."