raymond and nathalie do paris

it was weird to see ray again after two months.
at first he was like a stranger...
an elephant stranger.


but normandy was nice.
eventually he took off the mask.

when we got back to paris on tuesday we thought we'd do some sightseeing.
here are the minstrels in the diorama that showed notre dame being built.
get a real job slackers


ray + hands 1 : les halles


ray + hands 2 : montparnasse


this cabbage + these rocks were someone's gravesite offering to serge gainsbourg.
what happened to flowers?


no one had left anything for susan sontag.
sartre and de beauvoir at least got someone's eyeglasses.

anyway,
ray left today
which is why i'm sad
sitting here in my sweatpants and posting all these photos.


two more months
sigh.

bye ray
i miss you

raymond and nathalie do normandy

we walked past this windmill in moindrey on our way to mont-saint-michel.
it was so windy you could lean back and the wind would support your weight.



in moindrey the donkeys fell down when they tried to have sex.
we watched and laughed for a long time.
there wasn't much to do in moindrey.

in beauvoir ray found a tasty new girlfriend
too bad she's 'religeuse' she'll never put out



something about the abbey inspired a lot of penis graffiti



but the view was great


and the abbey was purty



then we went home and watched dubbed CSI on the telly.
i think this was the nicest day of the vacation.

yeaaaaaahhhhh i've gone public yeahhhh woohooo

photo: http://www.jumpsation.com

possibly even better than orangina.

so this week i had no class, so I watched a lot of movies.

MARDI: Cloverfield
MERCREDI: Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (French), Frenzy (dubbed)
JEUDI: Les demoiselles de Rochefort (French)
VENDREDI: There Will Be Blood

more on the movies later. but first off, my love song to french multiplexes.

^^^this is where i saw 'there will be blood' today, the gaumont parnasse. the lobby and hallways were painted cute bright colors and lit with quirky neon lights. and i love this 'sketched-on' wall. note also that they give you real couches to sit on while you wait to get in.

<<< later, when i settled into my high-backed and comfy (and CLEAN) seat i noticed these little light-shapes on the darkened screen. cute, no? the little petal-shapes echo the embroidered design on the seat backs and the multicolored lamps on the walls. and the gaumont parnasse isn't even one of the nicer multiplexes in paris. i've been to several that were just as cute. stephan told me on leaving paris that 'i wish i'd realized earlier that what i really wanted to do in paris is see two movies per day.' at the time, i thought he was nuts, but i'm really beginning to see the appeal.


OTHER COOL THINGS

>>> the police recently discovered a secret underground movie theater in an unexplored part of the parisian catacombs. apparently it was run by a secret society. a secret society that apparently outsourced its security to kevin macallister.

Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.

harry and marv would never have gotten past that one.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/08/filmnews.france

>>> Also, Business Week weighs in on why french multiplexes suck less than their american counterparts:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2002/nf20021011_8583.htm

>>> other people's lists of top movie theaters. note that i'm this impressed, and i've never been to any of the ones on either list.
http://gridskipper.com/travel/paris/first+date-movie-theaters-in-paris-278486.php
http://goparis.about.com/od/sightsattractions/tp/ParisCelluloid.htm