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April 29, 2009

Tuesday: Downtown

Tuesday morning I felt a little slow but managed to get up and head downtown to meet Caroline for a nooner lunch. Meeting just outside the Louvre, we headed into one of the museum's hundreds of entrances and ended up eating at a Chinese mall cafe which was no different from Panda Express except that nothing was fried, everything was wilted, nothing satisfied my post-Monday craving for salt and grease, and everything was generally horrible. Probably too much to expect good hangover food in Paris.

While I'd intended to tour the Louvre afterward it turned out the place was closed Mondays in addition to Sundays in addition to Friday due to the Labor Day holiday. So Caro had to head back to work, and I spent the day losing myself walking through downtown Paris blasting Asia and Ozzy -- a surprisingly good way to see the city.

Raw panorama output of the Louvre, click to enlarge

Raw panorama output of the opposite side of the Louvre, click to enlarge

Pont Alexandre III, click to enlarge

Le Petit Palais, click to enlarge

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April 28, 2009

Monday: Meeting The Mihail

First off, check out Autostitch. Great stuff -- just take a bunch of photos from all angles of a crowd or a dinosaur or mountain or something, put them all in one folder and select them all with the program, and it then runs a bunch of random computations and spits back out one big shot with everything blended together.

You just gotta be sure to not miss any spots or you'll get black filling, and if there's a car or something in one that's not in another. See panorama from Neuilly-Sur-Seine below or the ones of downtown Paris above.

Met up with Mihail Sotkov, my best friend from Bulgaria in 1997-1998 when I took a year off from Georgetown to work in the south of France doing community service and learning the language. Mikhail was in another school program, also liked beer specials and college girls, and as he spoke no English and I spoke no Bulgarian, being able to discuss each other's lives added an extra incentive to the classwork.

The bleached-blonde-headed Bulgarian nitwit I haven't seen since I was 21 picked me up in his fancy-shmancy Chrysler way out at the end of the Metro's 13 line, he threw a bottle of Jack Daniels at me, and took me back to the Median hotel here in Chatillon that he now assistant manages.

Upon arriving, we stowed our things in the room he crashes in during the week, and shows me on the hotel's PC-based security video system how two nights ago a dude in a motorcycle helmet with a handcannon had come in, tried to mug the Ecuadorian front desk clerk, but ended up leaving in frustration with the clerk couldn't care less about the gun and kept doing paperwork.

From there it got a little like old times, involving dinner, a little booze, a lot of effort to quickly regain French, discussion of which proper girl from my program he'd taken back to Bulgaria for Easter to meet his family without telling us, and the two of us later taking a train to the Champs d'Elysees where started at Charlie Birdy before hitting a few other local hotspots.

We spent a good amount of time catching up, and after a few hours that night very few of our more recent problems seemed highly important.

Hitting a tour of local hot spots, we learned about the swine flu from some Canadian women at an Irish pub called "The Pub" that I can't be bothered to find online, threw back a few kamikazes with an angry blonde Los Angelino whose aunt came to take her away, ended up almost swinging at a French company director who thought that the bar's theme made it okay to... act inappropriately to one of his colleagues, and a few other incidents I won't get into for fear of making myself look worse than usual. I do believe I Facebook messaged our good buddy Randy Strite from '98 Montpellier a good four times to give us a damn call but to no effect.

Later we all took a cab back past the Arc de Triomphe to Mihail's hotel, where he rigged up ladder access for us to the hotel's eighth-floor roof and view of all of downtown Paris. Great night.

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April 27, 2009

Sunday: Becoming Un Parrain

Sunday morning we awoke, gathered my friend Caroline Morange and her husband Valerie Kim's children, and headed out for the baptism of her youngest, Alexandre -- also known as Sasha. I was given the lines I had to read as part of becoming a godfather, and after much stumbling of the pronunciation managed to get it down okay.

We met with Caroline's family and friends outside a small church in Neuilly-Sur-Seine where she grew up, which was just facing the park leading from the Arc de Triomphe to La Defense (see photo below), and headed in for a short, beautiful ceremony. Only falling down on the altar once, Sasha did marvelously, and his year-older sister Lulu was also extremely fired up. Me, I was nervous as hell reading the lines in front of a church full of the French but since I couldn't understand any criticism and ignored all their giggling at my accent it worked out fine.

L'Eglise a Neuilly -- click to enlarge

My new godson, Alexandre "Sasha" Morange-Kim

Elodie, Sasha and Caroline

Lulu and Sasha

Somehow they got Larry David to play the priest

Caroline's brother Phillipe, Sasha and M. Morange

This very-much-not-a-vampire kid from another group adored the holy water

... so much so that he had no problem drinking it

Lulu wanted in on the holy water action

Sasha passed out afterward

Later in the day Caroline's parents threw an afternoon party at their place nearby, where I caught up with her parents, her younger sister Marie, her younger brother Phillip and his fiancee, Caro's friend Elodie, and many others. Everyone was incredibly kind, and I was able to dodge most of the "how many children do YOU have?" questions by focusing on watching Sasha and changing diapers.

Ended the day back at Caro's, tired but happy -- for a reason to come visit France I've definitely had worse. Can't wait to see Sasha and his family again Thursday evening.

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April 26, 2009

Friday & Saturday: Zurich to Paris

Got into Zurich around 11am Friday completely fried after all night flight.

Irina surprised the hell out of me by meeting me at the airport, and took me to pass out at her place to the tune of her very pretty but insanely loud leopard-cat Jamie's demon-yowling while she had to head back to work. Cat was named strangely the same as my old also very loud and also rather batshit-insane stripey-cat Jamie.

After a brief unconsciousness I managed a bit of a jog later that afternoon at a public track next door, only to get repeatedly and mockingly smoked by a five-year-old on a toy bike every time I did a lap. Little Swiss bastard. Irina came back from work a bit later, we headed out on the town for dinner to Angkor, an Asian place where the crispy roast duck in brown sauce was insane.

Next morning was calm and strangely domestic, and later with some help she helped get me on a two-leg train from Zurich to Paris. Seeing the girl after almost nine months was not easy but definitely worth the night. I later had to switch trains to the TGV in Strasbourg on the way to Paris, though not after passing through a singularly well-named (if not surprisingly unpopulated) town on the way:

Got into Paris around 8:30pm without hassle, then ended up getting lost near the Gare De L'Est and wandering for an hour through twilight Paris before finally taking two broken metros to where I was supposed to meet Caroline and Valerie. There we grabbed dinner at a beautiful little restaurant near station Grand Boulevard with an amusing (for a French chick) waitress and more duck since I was still missing the canard from the night before, and then managed to be home and passed out all in the same room at their place by midnight, ready for the baptisme the next day.

I slept for 11 hours straight.

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April 19, 2009

Kings of Leon

Pregaming before concert with Kelly, Rich & Carole at 973 Commonwealth, the restaurant formerly known as T's Pub. This place is horrible. There are a ton of tables, and the place is packed, but there's no wait list so it's just a mad free-for-all anytime any table gets up. It's like they sucked all the soul out of a high school cafeteria in Des Moines.

At least the show was pretty solid. Now just looking forward to The National at the end of May. "Who the f#%& is Karen?!"

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April 05, 2009

Flounder Inn Photo Trip

Headed out to Block Island yesterday with Isaac to see the folks prior to next weekend's shenanigans, but moreso to have him take some photos for use with the Flounder Inn website I've been tinkering with.

Ferry ride over was rather awesome, waves were pounding in from the southeast and the boat was bucking it. Got out there and had a great if not somewhat morbid dinner with the parents' friends, then headed out with Isaac to Club Soda where we ran into Nathaniel and Kara, Charlie Millikin and Teresa Bendokas. The latter of whom is not only getting hitched in three weeks, but was actually rocking two frickin' rings. Jeremy Brown was there fronting his hardcore island band 13 Miles Out, one tune inspired by Boxing Helena was particularly badass. Later ended up getting rioted at pool at Kittens by Chrissie and Kurt before calling it a night.

Next morning Isaac managed a few hundred photos of the house inside and out, Carol and Henry Hill stopped by to model. A few of them (below) look amazing -- the kid has real skills. Got back to the 'Ville with zero issues, now just have my work cut out dealing with all this damn site content.

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Currently Reading

David Benioff: City of Thieves: A Novel
Only partway through this but looking forward to finishing it as soon as I remember to buy an extra lightbulb for my reading lamp. The tale is being related to an American writer by his Russian grandfather, about being trapped starving in his hometown in Russian in the year the Germans were invading. The grandfather found himself imprisoned as a young man by the Russian militia for stealing a flask off a dead German pilot, and being then set on a mission to find eggs for the Commandant's daughter's wedding cake. Was just speaking recently with a friend who only reads nonfiction. Seems like all the nonfiction in the world about the Second World War could not begin to capture the sense of how it felt to be there at the time, with the world collapsing around you and yet desperately in love with your future executioner's engaged daughter. (****)
Dennis Lehane: The Given Day: A Novel
Usually Lehane's books are just very entertaining detective stories, though a few -- Shutter Island in particular -- stand out as more. This one so far seems like it's clearly going to fall in the "more" category, with a tale that looks like it's going big places. Chubby, happy, stupid Babe Ruth just joined and then failed to prevent the ruin of a negro baseball game while killing time waiting for the train, and that was just the prologue. Note: it's been almost six months and I have yet to finish this. (***)
Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Took a surprisingly short amount of time to get into this one and cranked through it once into it. Which is surprising given that I don't relate wholly to a massively pudgy, socially outcast, fatally romantic Dominican kid named Oscar Wao. But damn if the book's narrator didn't suck you into the world of Oscar, his family and the weight of the Dominican curse (fuku) that he carried on his back. Not to mention that the narrator was easily as much of a geek as Oscar, and loaded the pages with references to Final Fantasy, Starblazers, Warcraft, and all that other great gags that only true nerds would catch onto. I'm sure I missed dozens. What kicked this one up to five stars, though, was simply the writing of the last third of the novel. By the time he was most of the way through his story -- particularly the crushing tale of Oscar's grandfather's family -- Junot Díaz's typing was on fire, and the last chapter's flash-forward rush was just devastating. (*****)
Chuck Palahniuk: Choke: A Novel
The story of a man addicted to sex whose dying mother thinks he's everyone but himself and who earns his keep by faking choking in a restaurant for purposes of getting saved by people who then spend their lives looking out for his well-being. Brilliantly funny yet subtly sad, looking forward now to checking out more Palaniuk. (***)
Scott Smith: A Simple Plan
Much like his newer book The Ruins -- though containing actual chapters -- Smith's "A Simple Plan" just never stops getting worse, yet stays highly entertaining. Ostensibly it's the story of the narrator, his slower brother, and his brother's buddy who together happen across a downed plane containing a dead pilot and $4.4 million in cash out in the forest, and decide on the simple plan: take the money and hide it for six months, and if no one comes looking for it, keep it and disappear. The plan turns out not be so simple, and circumstances go from there. One of the best thrillers I've read. (****)
Yann Martel: Life of Pi
Finally got around to finishing something, thank god. Reading five books at the same time when you have very little time to read essentially means you finish nothing for ages, then finish a bunch all at once, but after getting halfway through this I couldn't stop until it was over. "Life of Pi" is at the outset the story of a confused Indian lad named Piscine (after a local pool), though nicknamed Pi for short. Pi's the son of a local zookeeper and a highly confused individual when it comes to religion. With the greatest of intentions he takes up Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all at once, much to the consternation of his parents and local Christian, Islamic, and Hindu priests. Approximately 30% through the tale Pi's father decides to sell of much of the zoo's livestock to take the remaining animals along with his family to Canada via a freighter -- a freighter which then proceeds to rapidly sink halfway across the Pacific, stranding Pi in a lifeboat alone with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and... a fully grown Bengal tiger named Richard Jenkins. The rest of the story concerns Pi's survival asea with this group, and goes some pretty damn surprising places -- places that I've never seen described before, some wonderfully funny, some darker than "The Terror" (the other book I'm taking for-freaking-ever to finish). I'm sucker for killer endings, and damn if the last thirty pages are so aren't the definition of a fast read. The last page -- and especially Pi's final words -- are simply heartbreaking, though undoubtedly truer than anything I've read in ages. Here's to the world in which there lives a Richard Jenkins. (*****)
Dan Simmons: The Terror: A Novel
Just started it, so far there are two ships in the 1800's locked into ice while trying to cross the northwest passage through the artic. And something's out there. Not bad so far. (****)
Dennis Lehane: Darkness, Take My Hand
Having started with A Prayer For Rain, actually the fifth in the series, I'd gone back to the first Kenzie/Gennaro novel set in modern Boston, then moved on to this one. Like the others, the book focuses on a wisecracking Boston private eye raised in Dorchester who, along with his hot but equally intelligent partner Angie and unstoppable juggernaut of a buddy Bubba, jumps into cases that are way over their head. Unlike the cliche this setup sounds like, however, this Lehane series inevitably ends up being far darker than its setup would have you believe, with an ending involving dual serial killers that's pretty much unbelievable in its violence. Like the movie Gone, Baby, Gone (which I needn't read, as I believe the movie did a good enough job), and Lehane's own Mystic River, people are frequently more than they seem, but usually for the worse. While I can't say any of the series will leave you walking away with a smile on your face, damn if they aren't pageturners. Looking forward to the third one, which is allegedly on the more comedic side. (***)
Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (audio)
Not sure if you can really call this a novel, more a novella, On Chesil Beach is the second Ian McEwan book I've read, after the terrific Saturday. The story is straightforward and pretty damn simple: two kids in England in the 60's from different backgrounds find themselves in a room in a hotel on the English shore on the first night of their honeymoon, wondering how the hell to get it on. He's really into the idea, she... not so much. From there the book covers only the next two hours or so (or more, maybe), as well as the events in their lives leading up to that night, but it's McEwan's wording and painting of what's going on inside both of their heads that makes the book so killer. You get to know both of these two people -- we all know people in many ways like these two -- and it's how the drama of the night plays out in the big and evn more little ways that sucks you in. This isn't the most action-packed thing you'll ever read -- hell, it'd probably even make a shitty dramatic movie -- but somehow the thing gets into you with its mood, laying you out with an ending you somehow knew was coming from the first line. (*****)
David Anthony Durham: Acacia: Book One: The War With the Mein (Acacia)
Been awhile since I found the time or geek factor to read a good fantasy novel, probably not since reading the LOTR trilogy in '97 and not really even enjoying it that much. Loved books like the Dragonlance serieses back in high school, though, so when EW recommended this as a terrific start to a trilogy, figured I'd give it a shot. Acadia is the island capital of a massive empire on a world much like ours, an empire which has ruled the Known World for a thousand years. Like many empires, however, (I'm guessing here), its foundation is rotten, built on a tithe of slaves send to a faraway unknown people in return for an addictive heroin/weed-like powder known as "Mist". Without getting too much into the politics of it all, the king of the world is assassinated early on, his four children are scattered to the four corners of the world, his kingdom conquered by cursed Norseish conquerors, and the book focuses mainly on who the heirs grow up to become and how the family is reunited. Actually pretty damn riveting stuff, Durham describes clearly how each of the children is molded by the new lives they're thrown into in a nature/nurture argument that -- much like most of the characters and their choices in the book -- never becomes a picture painted in clear black or white. Not a perfect book -- I never got a sense of the countryside or the people of the lands outside of the royal main characters, and a few more small, comic details would have been welcome -- it was still a great read, with a damn strong ending that makes April '09 still too far away. (***)

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