I fucking love Paris (Part 1)

Even the goddamn clothespins in Paris window displays are charming.

Oh I know - it's an awfully ineloquent way to express my love, unless resorting to common vulgarities is your bread and butter, but after having communicated my disdain for Vegas with similar base language ("I fucking hate Vegas") I needed karmic epithet balance. Furthermore, a verbal punch to one up all you Paris lovers was in order for you can't hardly swing a baguette without knocking into some rube's drippy praises for the city of light.

Walk with me through my photographic lovebomb to Paris, god fucking bless her.

April got me a real camera for my birthday so expect gratuitous fauxfarty art shots.

Oh, perfect timing - here's one of those gratuitous international door shots right now!

Au Petit Versailles du Marais

Let's start with breakfast or petite dejeuner as the French say, or if you're our very hip, very hot server you say "petit daaaaazhhhhh" because you're busy and hot. We stayed in the vibrant, dynamic Marais where queers and jews and queer jews and jew queers and old and young and the young old go to play, shop, drink and eat falafal. The cafe sign (above) could have read "Our Pain Chocolat is so Good It Will Make You Weep and Tear Your Clothes with Grief and You will Sit Shiva that You Don't Live Here." I'm sure I could have a throwdown with all you Paris lovers out there, but I contend that the pain chocolat at Au Petit Versailles was by leaps and bounds the best I've ever tasted. I actually shushed April so she could better hear the crackly explosion of the millions of layers, the top caramelized so perfectly I could taste the baker's suntan from the Riviera, the richness of chocolate, warm and melty like a, uh, (insert consistent metaphor here).

A moment of silence here.... above:
BEHOLD! the clothes-ripping pain chocolat (and some shitty coffee).

In some of the open markets in Paris, we'd see vendors cooking out of these
Donner Party-sized pans. Parents: watch your children.

Cured meat foodporn shot for my friends Matt Wright and Larry Liang,
two men who know their way around, uh, a sausage.

In Paris, death is more interesting.

We spent a morning walking through the Pere Lachaise Cemetary where Jim Morrison, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde are buried, among others. I did absolutely nothing to this photo (perhaps I should have, being still very much a beginner) but I loved the lighting, the creepy glow and the angles. Hard to tell here but the white crypt on the left was tilted away from the middle crypt at almost the same angle. April quipped that the deceased must not have liked each other's company very much.

I love how it appears that smoke is coming through the crypt which gives it extra creepy points in my book.

Rust is pretty.

Not exactly sure what Labor, Probus, Fides and Eterna mean but
I'm fairly certain it means you're bug food if your name appears on the plaque.

Don't you just love the way foreign emo types walk through cemetaries snapping shots of old crypts?

Artsyfartsy pic #239 subtitled "Becky, goddammit, I'm ready to go!"



Wow.

This made us completely stop dead in our tracks. Dead in our tracks with camera poised. Apparently not everything is tasteful in the city of lights. Please, if there is a God, do not let this man be American.

Some people are really scared of clowns. I'm not. I'm posting this because I'm a giver.

People with clown fears often have doll fears.

Must have been one hell of a rager at the Pyramids last night,
Sphinx ain't feeling too hot today.

You know what I think about when I see this pic of a typical Parisian street?
I think: how many people do I have to sleep with to pay for my Paris once a year habit?

It's not everyday you are walking down the street when a truck opens its back door
and offloads whole sides of various animals for the local butcher.

Bonjour Monsieur.

So for those of you who've never been to Paris, it is absolutely true what you hear about Parisians and their small dogs. Parisian dogs prance leashless through the streets casting their petite poops absolutely everywhere (much of it remains just as it landed, a form of Parisian street "art" if you will while the rest of it becomes a form of performance art or interpretative dance when shoe meets le petit poo-poo). Parisian dogs sit quietly at cafes. They do not bark, they speak in hushed tones. They discuss baguettes, cheese, and the incredible gravity defying poo cairn that black poodle left on the corner. Photographed above is a classic example of the Parisian dog, caught in a pensive moment at his perch at the tabac counter (tobacco stand/convenience store cafe). The dogs are just as particular as the French; not rude, per se - but decidedly cautious and not superficially friendly like a good ol' American dog sluttily licking anyone's hand. You have to earn your wags in Paris, both canine and human.

(to be continued, tomorrow...)