Paris Werewolves

Get ready for your close up. Just like the US has spelling bees and England has full-contact cheese rolling, France has la dictée , dictation contests where people transcribe oral passages and get graded for spelling, grammar, and proper verb conjugation. All of these are extremely tricky for those of us new to French. For example, in English, the verb "eat" is spelled and pronounced exactly the same in the sentences "I eat," "you eat," and "they eat." In French, the sentences would use mange , manges , and mangeant , respectively--spelled differently, but pronounced exactly the same. And that's just a basic word. So it heartens me a little to know that these skills are also difficult enough for native French speakers that they can be used to sort out les superieurs from les inferieurs . Competitive dictées are very popular, often attracting thousands of participants and broadcast on television . Contests split into divisions for students

Some vendeurs à la sauvette , Quai Jacques Chirac, 7th Arr. I've lived in tourist-dense places pretty much my entire adult life. If you don't work in the hospitality industry, there is no direct upside to having masses of people descend on your city. I can accept that tourism might bring a place some net-positive indirect effects--local tax revenues, construction jobs when attractions and hotels are being built--but I guarantee it's more complicated than the tourism industry and economists generally would have you believe. Just look as San Francisco for an example of how revenues from tourism don't boost investments in infrastructure or local services. But if you are lucky enough to live anywhere that is interesting for its local culture, its natural beauty, or its architectural heritage, tourists are like the hangover you must inevitably endure from enjoying booze. Except, in principle, you can quit drinking booze when the hangovers become too miserable.  Paris' 7t

The 13th Arr. seems to be the epicenter of Paris street art. There are not only numerous building-scale artworks, but decent quality graffiti abounds. There are also quite a few Invaders (invading, I guess).   Slow down and check out the 13th Arr. This is not just my opinion. The Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau has put together a street art walking tour of the 13th . I've seen most of the large-scale, commissioned works they include in the map, since they center around the apparthotel where we stayed for a month when we first arrived in Paris. But walking around the neighborhood for the first time since then reminded me of how much there is to see in between the major would--which, if you stopped to pay attention to all of it, would make the entire walk daunting. I may do it anyway, if the cold, rainy weather ever relents. I can at least skip the Shepard Fairy wall. It's nice, but he's more of a t-shirt company these days. It seems so familiar that, chances are, you&

Chez Papa, 7th Arr. I've lamented elsewhere that professional jazz is bumping up against a cruel arithmetic logic—namely, the paying audience gets older each year, with more listeners going to their rewards than are replaced by younger fans going to the shows. That seems true for jazz played in concert venues and recorded for albums (or whatever passes for albums these days), but less so for jazz played purely for the joy of listening to or making music—that is, jazz as a form of folk art or communal expression. Two things have got me thinking about this lately. The first is that we've fallen into a nice routine of having lunch occasionally at Café de Mars, a neighborhood place that has a jazz duo every Saturday. The duo consists of an immensely talented guitarist who is joined by a few rotating accompanists on violin, cello, or second guitar. The set list is jazz standards, played usually in the Hot Club style with touches of Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, and Barney Kessel.

Invasion, Champ de Mars, 7th Arr. In the 1990s, street artist Invader began affixing tiled images of "pixelated" video game characters to structures in Paris. As of today, there are more than 4,000 little appliqué invaders in 82 different cities--and another that made it aboard the International Space Station. Like other street artists such as Banksy or Shepard Fairey, Invader's popularity has propelled him (all indications are that Invader is a him) from strictly guerrilla to mainstream, with public commissions and now, in Paris, a dedicated indoor museum space. If you admire street art largely for its audacity--the surreptitious entry into private spaces, usually under the cover of darkness, at great risk of arrest for trespassing or sustaining bodily harm in falls from ledges, ladders, and other high altitude precipices--this is a letdown. But cheer up; there was not much in the installation to interest any art collectors/speculators. No original invaders had been rem

I finally got my first photo of owls in the wild. I had to brave freezing temperatures and icy conditions, but it was worth it. Discovering this pair would not have been possible without the assistance of the Finnish embassy in Paris' 7th Arrondissement, which provided excellent satellite imagery. Finland, as seen from Earth's orbit. Owls popped up all over Finland--except in my binoculars, unfortunately. The owl council will now judge you.