LA en vie

Parking at Trocadéro: illegal, but not really illegal

Back in Paris, with that agreeable sensation that summer is finally here. Long, long summer days of northern Europe, that finish at eleven o'clock.

Trocadero was jammed with cars parked nose-in along the curb. A pervenche was busily writing tickets for them.

There used to be a big bus stop right where these cars are parked. One day I was sitting at the Café Carette (which you can see in the middle of this photo) and noticed that the bus stop was no longer there. I asked the waitress what had happened. She pointed off to the distance. "It's been déplacé to avenue Henri-Martin so that more cars can park here. One of the workers told me."

Parking here is still illegal, though! But of course, most of the people who park at Trocadero are at the cafés and can monitor their cars.  If the pervenches show up, they rush out to move them.

This is a good example of French realism.

Hamburg: Home of the tall

In Hamburg, everyone is tall, and all the children are blond.

Okay, that's a generalization, but I felt like a dwarf at my height, at which I feel tall in France and normal in L.A.

In Die Welt I read an article about a doctor in the Black Forest who specializes in making people taller by breaking their bones, inserting nails, and letting the bone grow back. There was a photo of a young Turkish woman before and after she "grew" 25 cm, almost 10 inches (her legs looked better afterwards). It seems extreme, but according to the doctor, some people find being short even more painful.

One man in the article, who is my height, explained his desire to be taller by saying, "Have you ever been to Hamburg?"

Ich bin ein Hamburger

Have you ever been to Hamburg? It's actually a nice town. It has lots of canals, more than 2000 bridges, and more trees than any other city in Europe. Germans usually list it as their second favorite German city, after my darling Munich  (die Weltstadt mit Herz, the "secret capital of Germany").

I was in town sort of on business, and took a walking tour. The guide was a tall young woman with horrendous teeth, so bad you could scarcely look at her. But she was opinionated and funny, not afraid to call a building a scheusslichkeit (horror, with overtones of excrement) and you ended by warming to her. I loved how much she loves her town.

Apparently when other Germans hear that you are from Hamburg, they are likely to say, "Hummel hummel! Mors mors!" The Hamburgers find this deeply annoying. The guide explained that this was not something that locals would say. It's rude! They use it mainly at football games.

The story is that in the late 1700s there was a foul-tempered water-carrier in the old town, who was disliked by all the Hamburg street urchins. The children would run at his heels taunting him, calling "Hummel, Hummel!"* and the man, who couldn't chase them because he was loaded down with the many gallons of water, would call back, "Mors, mors!" which was short for "Klei mi am Mors" ("kiss my ass!")

This ever-repeated dialogue became well known all over the city. The beleaguered water carrier became a symbol of the city and there are several statues of him. The Hamburg water trucks have a picture of him on their sides. At soccer games in Hamburg, when someone scores a goal for the home team, the announcer finishes the report of the score with "Hummel hummel!" to which the audience roars "Mors mors!"

You know those open-air art exhibits where different artists will each paint a copy of the same statue, all over the city? In Paris a few years ago, there was one with cows. New Orleans had fish, Lake Charles (Louisiana) has alligators, Los Angeles has angels, but in Hamburg, it's the old water-carrier.

*There is some dispute about what the "Hummel" meant. Some say the water-carrier lived in the former house of a beloved soldier named Hummel. Others say the Hummel referred to the bent back of the water carrier.

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

The pale skin

I may have the palest skin in Paris (my aunts in Louisiana asked why I was wearing white stockings with my dress) but such is the mystique of the tan in the French mind that several people have already tried to compliment me by saying that I am bronzée. The idea that you could live in a sunny climate and not want to get as tan as possible has not yet arrived in France.

In fact, in California I have seen more and more women using parasols. It's a style that re-started from Asia, but it's practical on hot days, much cooler than a hat.

De retour

I'm back in Paris and as usual when I arrive, the Internet has stopped working. I think that I must create disturbances in the field-- at least, this is the only explanation I can think of for why my telephones always seem to be on the blink and the wifi never stays connected. I feel sure that in the future someone will discover that certain people do indeed emanate weird electricity. This will be about the same time it is discovered that vegetables are actually bad for children.

On arrival at CDG, I saw a huge crowd around the television in a cafe, watching the Croatia-Germany match. Even three soldiers in camouflage who were supposed to be patrolling the airport were watching instead, their machine guns cradled in their arms-- looking guiltily around from time to time.

I went to buy my favorite French newspaper, Le Parisien. I couldn't see the paper anywhere. Then I noticed the panneau: "Aucun journal pour aujourd'hui (grève)" [no newspaper today (strike)].

On the way into the city, the taxi driver, a Thai woman, warned us that there was a big strike tomorrow. "I hope you are not going anywhere!"

Luckily, I wasn't.

Apostrophe's

Few things embarrass me more than making a mistake in my writing, even though in English, at least, everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Intellectually, I know perfectly well that that a living language is constantly changing and that yesterday's grammatical mistake is today's normal usage. But I am still at heart a language snob and a conservative. If I were French, I would probably want to write estoit instead of était and find it normal that scholars are trying to fossilize the language in a huge prescriptive dictionary. If I were British, I'm sure I would look down my nose at Americans and spell "jail" with a g (so sensible!) and say "the government are."

Back in my own country, I am having a hard time with the assault of badly spelled English on all sides. One of the biggest differences between the English in England and the English here, besides the fact that most Americans are descended from non-English-speakers, is that in England, everyone who writes for the public eye has probably achieved at least an A-level standard in English. Here, even teachers and journalists for major newspapers make egregious mistakes. The mistakes are so common that I feel sure they will become the new standard usage.

A's school here, known as a very good one, sent home a reading list for the summer in which a history teacher recommends The Perfect Mile with "The rivalry that developed between he and Santee is riveting" (and an academic administrator writes of a famous book, "After reading this book I could not believe that I had never heard of it"). In general, everyone says "from he and I" and "with she and I."

No one in the entire United States under the age of fifty seems to know how to use apostrophes or the abbreviations "they're" and "you're." Let's not even get into "its" and "it's"! English is unusually hard to spell; French is even worse. Maybe we should just adopt the German method and do without apostrophes completely. Who need's them?

Whenever I get upset about these things, I remember that the word "grammar" is related to "grimoire" (book of magic, in French) and to "glamour" and that they all come from the idea that a Latin grammar book had something glamorous, magical, and unknown about it. The whole idea that there is a correct way to write and spell is a little kooky from a linguistic point of view anyway.

U.S. vs U.K.: the personals

Guess which is which?
[Edited to remove local refs]

Do you see a pattern?

Lady of the Bedchamber. A rare opportunity has arisen. Appeal, compliance and enthusiasm during the probationary period will greatly enhance your application for this prestigious post. Lingerie allowance. Full training given.
box no. *

Man, 24, interested in Wagner, Edwardianism, fortified wines, and debauchery, seeks older women for coy exchanges of Wildean put-downs, followed by forbidden candle-lit passions, leading to clandestine affair, epic betrayal, and eventual Götterdämmerung and redemption. Accountants and paleontologists need not apply. 
box no. **

..........................................

REALLY PRETTY, SMART, CEO—athletic, trim, divorced, with ever-present dash of self-deprecating humor. Gracious, irreverent, fun, hot ticket....international in outlook both in vocation and avocation. Easygoing travel companion, true explorer’s spirit, be it exploring around the corner or the world. Passions include: lazy afternoons on my dock, cooking fresh, delicious meals, photography, sailing, literature, movies, Italian hill towns, improving rusty French, The Economist, Peru, and my version of the Mediterranean pace of life. No big resorts, just wonderful hotels or a touch of old world decadence, remote villages, city buzz, authenticity. Would love to meet co-adventurer—bright, successful, cosmopolitan man, 49–65.

STUNNING, INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS, and athletic. Consultant/educator—tall and slim with natural radiance. Adventurous, with calm, warm demeanor and genuineness of character. Expressive, affectionate, divorced, 5'8". Laughs a lot, thinks deeply, politically liberal. Interested in social change, literature, politics, psychology, nature, beauty. International outlook, has lived abroad. Actively enjoys skiing, hiking, trekking in Nepal, tapas in Barcelona, snuggling at home, Sunday Times, The Economist, theater, Mozart sonatas. Seeks healthy/active man (58–60s) with warmth and an intellectual bent.

INTELLECTUAL/PHYSICIAN, driven by ideals to be generative, to do socially relevant work, and also to have cut muscles (6'1", 56); seeks a woman who would enjoy someone emotionally connected, yet very male.

Filming at dawn

It's the crack of dawn and I just came back from the airport. I love driving back along the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) where you often see dolphins as you sit at a stop light. At the Santa Monica pier there was a lot of activity in the huge parking lot: sharp-edgedwhite trucks and brilliant lights aimed at the beach, making part of it as bright as day. A television show was filming at dawn against the twilit horizon.

At the beach, it was easy for anyone driving by to see where they were filming. But in ordinary neighborhoods around L.A., you often see signs like the one above, giving directions to a set. One thing I've learned is that most movies have fake names that are used all during production, especially if a big star is involved. There are too many crazies around.

Trailer Canyon

I went hiking up Trailer Canyon, in the Pacific Palisades Highlands. This is an expensive new neighborhood several miles from any kind of store or restaurant (I guess the servants do the shopping). All the houses are built in uniform Spanish-Colonial style and some of the streets are gated. If you follow signs, you get to Trailer Canyon trailhead, walk up a steep bank, and soon come out onto a nice trail. Later on, in the Santa Monica mountains, the trail becomes a wide fire road that is a favorite with mountain bikers.

What I love about it are the views.

You are hiking all alone, feeling as if you are on a lonely, lovely country road-- the only sound is the wind and the birds....

and you turn your head and see a vast city

by the ocean.