26 août 2009
He was a Kennedy!
Too bad he wouldn't see the emergence of universal health coverage! Life sucks sometimes...
19 janvier 2009
French cuisine 101
In Hollywood, you have slasher movies. In France, we have "cooking TV shows". Enjoy....
02 juin 2008
Hard times coming in suburbia...
27 mars 2008
The President, The Queen and the Shadoks...
I remember that, while I was in Boston, many american people asked me why the french hated the english so much. My usual answer was "Because they are the Ennemy" which, I recognize, did not enlighten the debate at all but unexpectedly made a lot of people happy there. I also used to elaborate on the non existent and therefore infinitely conceptual english cuisine which, I recognize, is a rather unfair answer. As everybody knows in the Solar System and beyond, food is the real talon d'Achilles of the United Kingdom...
But with Our President being invited by Her Majesty to renew the entente cordiale, time is over for old jokes. Indeed, the real answer is that we don't understand all the subtleties of the english culture.
Of course, you could argue that my latin and mediterranean background is a serious handicap. But even in the most serious french media as Le Monde, this cultural misunderstanding pops out.
In today's edition, the dinner offered by Her Majesty the Queen to Our President has been described in great details so that french citizens could get a glance at this sophisticated british ceremonial. However it was a total failure: once again we faced the cultural gap between the Kingdom and the continent.
Maybe you'll never understand this quotation about the ballet introducing the dinner but, believe me, it perfectly summarizes the wideness of the Channel for us:
Le ballet rappelle le pompage des Shadoks.
However, the article is not so irreverencious. They even managed to keep it politically correct by saying that the menu is always written in french in reference to french ancestors of the Windsors. Of course everybody in the Galaxy recognizes here the predominance of the French cuisine over the so-called local "gastronomy". But it would have been a fatal blow to the new entente cordiale to write this in a national french news paper!
Last but not least, God save the Queen, the Shadoks and the French Cuisine.
06 janvier 2008
My wishes for 2008...
A few days ago, in a sudden access of hubris, I promised you my wishes for the year 2008. But after a few days, I'am still wondering what they could be apart from the usual stuff: peace, love, prosperity and good heath for you and your family.
Unfortunately, I'am afraid it will be easier for the average american citizen to loose 20 pounds than to clean up the tremendous mess left by the Bush administration... and to provide prosperity to the one or two million american families trapped in the subprime aftermath a part of which are now leaving in tent cities.
At least, some of the NY Times editorialists have woken up lately The last New York Times 2007 editorial was brillant. Let's wish that the next one will celebrate a change for your country.
04 janvier 2008
Goodbye 2007!!! (French perspective)
Of course, we elected a new president, we got a Nobel Prize in Physics, a divorced president and a brand new Top Model First Lady, we even got the iPhone before Chrismas but.... through this turmoil, France has remained France:
Enjoy... and wait for my 2008 wishes on Sunday!
09 décembre 2007
White and wild night in Lyon
Today in Lyon is a special day. It is the Fête des Lumières ("celebration of the light" as we call it). Started in the 19th century in connection to religious history, it is a well established tradition. All around the city, artists use buildings and light to create ephemere artwork while many inhabitants put candles on the border of their windows. During three nights, tens of thousands of people wolk around the city contemplating the lights.
This year, Louis XIV, or more precisely the statue of this famous king, has been encapsulated in a plastic bubble with a snow gun. Just like the Eiffel Tower souvenirs you can buy in Paris:
Tonight is the peak of the celebration. And four floors below my appartement, in the little garden dominating the eastern part of the city, electronic sounds and rythms meet lights and colors. A rave party is taking place there. And my night is going to be short...
22 novembre 2007
Thanksgiving: en France, on fait passer un ancien président à la casserole.
On this Thanksgiving evening, American families will share the traditional turkey... I have estimated that today, tens of millions of turkey will be eaten in the US.
In France, this year, we have finally decided to celebrate Thanksgiving.
But instead of condemning 70 million turkeys to bo roasted in our kitchens, we have just targeted a single individual: our former president Jaques Chirac, who has just been put under formal investigation for public funding diversion occuring when he was mayor of Paris. Between 1977 ansd 1995, he may have diverted some fundings to provide fictive jobs to various people. Until now he has escaped investigation thanks to his presidential immunity but those times are gone...
Surprisingly, it was quite difficult to find any allusion to this event in US and english media. I have even looked at the famous anti-french english tabloid called "The Sun"... Nothing... Nada... Kedalle as we say in french. I have found one article in the New York Times.
To summarize: don't believe those bloody english who say that french rugby players eat babies on Thanksgiving.
And we don't eat ortolans nor cut heads off anymore but we never go on strike when its time to eat foie gras. Happy thanksgiving (-:
12 novembre 2007
A french president in Washington
Each time our president will cross the Atlantic, I expect to receive some mail from BU... At least this time it was the case. But I won't tell who wrote me (-: ...
Of course, all american media reported about it, including the NY times... According to them, it's like a new honeymoon in a couple that went throught tough times. A born again romance between France and America after the dispute over the war in Irak. Sarkozy, our "eternal seducer" president, was desperately looking forward to this visit as an opportunity to declare his eternal flame to america.
Even if he called for a stricter economic policy and for a change of attitude and concrete measures in the fight against global warming, Sarkozy's speech in front of congress contained an amazing love declaration that could only rise applauses and smiles from an american congress undermined by doubt about the future and the consequences of the war in Irak.
It turns out that the french presidential web site contains an english translation of Sarkozy's speech in front of ythe US congress. One part of it amazed me:
"My generation, without coming to your land, shared all the American dreams. Our imaginations were fuelled by the winning of the West and Hollywood. By Elvis Presley whom people are perhaps not used to mentioning within these walls, but for my generation he is universal. By Duke Ellington, Hemingway. By John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth. And by Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, fulfilling mankind’s oldest dream the day the Americans walked on the moon, America was universal and everyone wanted to be part of the adventure."
American people often see our new president as a modern man compared to Chirac. Of course he is: there is one generation between them. But indeed, reading this part of his address to the congress, I can only conclude that he is still one generation behind many european people.
His view of america is mainly a postcard one, built from collectives memories designed in Hollywood Studios and fed with the music pouring out of radios. Is our president's mind filled with cliches and postcard of a virginal land populated by a pantheon of american heroes and mythology ? Seems so...
But today, many european people (almost of all them in my job) have spent a year or more in the US. Doing so is a unique opportunity to open your mind to the complexity of the US. Beyond the mythology and all the blabla about the american dream, the land of the free and american heroes, comes a contrasted country which, despites its relative youth, also experiences the burden of its own history... Even Bernard Henri Lévy, the archetype of the french intellectual usually rebuilding the world from Parisian cafés has spent a year traveling in the US and writing American Vertigo, an attempt to capture a view of today's America...
Times are changing. Everybody knows that America is living slowly leaving the golden age of post-WWII in the dust. The old ways of thinking don't work anymore. Old ennemies have vanished in the dust of globalization and the world is changing faster than ever. Being american used to be a source of pride but in the light of recent history, things may not be so simple. In the forthcoming decades, rising costs of fossile energy and climate change will question the american way of life in a tougher way than both world wars together.
In the franco-american couple, one of the two partners is likely to experience a very serious middle age crisis (to be honnest the other one has been leaving under a permanent existencial crisis for the last quarter of century)....
But, as we say in french, l'amour est aveugle...
28 octobre 2007
Little differences...
Moving from the US to France implies a few changes in your habbits.
Of course, there is the metric system. So forget about oz, inches, feet and pounds. As a matter of fact, it makes things easier at least for me. As a side effect, the quarter pound cheese is called the Royal Cheese.
The supermarket is a big change. First of all, there is no peanut butter (or its hidden deep in the dark corners of the shop) and there are many more fruits and vegetable. Moreover they look in a much better shape apart from the ones at Whole Food but I was leaving too far from this shop...
Another big difference is the charcuterie. It consists into sausages, patés and hams which we usually eat at the end of the afternoon or as a first course with a glass of red wine. I have never seen any decent charcuterie in America apart from the first course I shared with Peter at the Sel de la Terre.
Raw milk cheese also which seems to be forbidden in the US can be found very easily. On my first week end in France, I rushed in Galland shop. Galland is a master of the Guilde des Fromagers, a kind of Jedi order for cheese producers and sellers. I'll post more on French cheese later.
I then went to Bouillet, a famous patissier known for his maracons, a typical french cookie for coffee or tea time (see picture below).
But he also makes a variety of deserts, so original that the guy is becoming an international celebrity.
After a year in the small kitchen of the Marion Inn, going back to my 14 square meters fully equipped kitchen at home was like moving to Versailles. So I spend some time cooking a few things like an apple coffee cake heavily loaded with suggar, butter, vanilla and rhum (mmmhhh but not for a diet) and a veau Marengo, a recipe invented by Napoléon's cook just after the victory at the Marengo battle on June 14th, 1800.
It took me a few days to get used the short waiting times between two trains in Lyon's subway. The Green Line in Boston is indeed much slower. I could read the whole Metro while waiting whereas here, I never go beyond page three. Another little difference.
One bad surprise to finish this post: shortly after my landing, I discovered that my local taxes had doubled! Arghhhhh.... I strongly suspect that the previous owner of my apartment didn't declare a realistic level of comfort or that they misunderstood my own declaration. So I'll have to meet the tax administration to figure out what happens. I'am sure you'll love this story.
