Paris Werewolves

One of these characters is a werewolf.

The Excel chart image from the previous post on political forecasting left the webpage ugly. Let's pretty it up again with a vintage Aston Martin, done up mildly for bridal photos.

Wheelchair Rugby, Paralympics Preliminary Rounds, USA vs. Japan, Champ-de-Mars Arena We took the five-minute walk from our apartment to the Grand Palais Éphémère at the Champ de Mars to watch a wheelchair rugby double-header, Great Britain vs. Denmark, followed by USA vs Japan. It goes without saying that I knew nothing about the sport going into the arena, and only slightly more after having watched two complete matches. But that didn't really matter because superficially, the game shares the basic structure as rugby, soccer, basketball, hockey polo or lacrosse. A squad from one team possesses an item (ball, puck or human skull) with the intent of of placing it within the confines of a demarcated scoring location, while a squad from another team attempts to prevent them from doing so. If successful, the other team possesses the item and the roles reverse. If unsuccessful, possession of the item is up for grabs. I guess in this regard, American football follows a similar blueprint....

Invader Museum, 3rd Arrondissement Walking through parts of Paris at times feels like being in an architectural museum. Sometimes you catch glimpses of the city framed through a window, usually when you are supposed to be paying attention to something else. Musée de la Vie Romantique, 9th Arr.   Pavillion de l'Arsenal, 4th Arr. Grand Palais Éphémère, 7th Arr. Église Saint-Eustache, 1st Arr. Palais des Papes, Avignon

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...

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.  

Artist's rendering of Electric Scooter Nun, 7th Arr. While riding in the bike lane one cold morning earlier this week, I was delighted to see a nun on a trottinette électrique (electric scooter) shooting past me in the other direction. Safety considerations left no chance for a photo, but it seemed important that I capture the fleeting image somehow. Hence the cartoon scribbles. Except for the sneakers, Dirty Harry glasses, RBG lace collar, and the flying cross, I think it's a pretty accurate likeness. Not sure why she's wearing a cape in the drawing, though. And the tower is pretty badly done--nor is it on a hill. The important thing is that the list of Things I've Never Seen Nuns Doing is now smaller by one. Last April, Paris held a referendum on whether scooter-share companies such as Dott and Lime would have to remove their trottinettes from all public streets. Only about 8% of eligible voters turned out, but they voted against the scooter companies by 90%. By th...

Under the tree beneath the famed dome of Galeries Lafayette, 9th Arr. Christmas in France tends towards the traditional. There are carnival rides set up around festive markets, where you can buy gift items and holiday treats such as vin chaud (warm mulled wine) and nougat sliced from huge slabs. The patisseries swap in desserts such as bûche de Noël , which are basically thin, buttercream-frosted cakes, rolled like Hostess Ho-Hos into logs ( bûches ) and decorated with sugar mushrooms, ivy, mistletoe, and other woodland symbiotes. These are not to be confused with Catalonia's tio de Nadal , the Christmas log that Catalan children whack with sticks until it shits out candy and presents--like a scatological piñata, with delicious turds substituting for delicious internal organs. More traditional are galettes de rois , flaky cakes stuffed with a creamy almond paste called frangipane . Named for the three kings from the Gospel of Matthew's nativity story, they are traditionally se...