"La Fête Nat"

It's a national holiday. It's in July. The date starts with "four." How different can it be?
Well, assez different.
For starters, there are NO decorations anywhere. No blue, white, and red napkins or streamers in the supermarket, no flags waving outside of people's homes or glued onto t-shirts. No tricolor desserts or face paints for sale. Unless you're in an official military parade, it's really not your place to show any team spirit (expect for lighting fire crackers).
Luckily being a willing spectator isn't that hard of a role to play, especially in Paris.
This year, crowds will gather early in the Champs de Mars. Not to eat hot dogs or watch cheesy reenactments of the storming of the Bastille--or even to sing patriotic ditties. They'll be there for Johnny. But once the night is filled with booms and echoing "oohs," you might well tell yourself, "It's not that different." Who would have thought that after dark, even Parisians can act impressed?

Sophia Loren and Cary Grant as Tom Winters and Cinzia Zaccardi. [Online image] 1958.

Nothing Says Summer in Paris Like a Sweaty Day of "Soldes" Shopping

When trios of long-legged ados, free at last from the tortures of the bac, start strutting down rue de Passy in short shorts and slinky tanks, ready to raid the Gap--or at least the soft serve machine at McDonalds--you know another summer has arrived in Paris.
And it's not just the sudden plethora of teenyboppers that gives the color of the season away. Tiny grandmothers shopping for even tinier baby clothes and soberly dressed career women combing through racy swimsuits are pretty good signs.
The important thing to remember is that being an innocent bystander is not an option. Be prepared to have complete strangers ask you for shopping advice. "Should I get the skirt or the dress? In black and white or brown and cream?" All notions of French reserve go out the window when soldes are in the air.

Hayley Mills as Pollyanna. [Online image] 1960.

Finding the Keys to Lutèce

It's easy to forget that not everyone who comes to Paris is living a dream come true. Take a walk to the Eiffel Tower on a summer evening, and sure, you'll pass a group of well-fed, wide-eyed tourists, cameras flashing away. But just around the corner, a different group will be waiting, metal rings of Eiffel Towers dangling from their fingers like misshapen keys. Their wide eyes won't waste a second on the Iron Lady: all they see are three pairs of blue-cuffed hands grabbing the bare arms of one of theirs and his keys to the Parisian dream being torn away.

Ayush Mahesh Khedekr as Jamal Malik. [Online image] 2008.

Working Girl in Paris

Having a job in Paris intra-muros has always seemed like a luxury to me. No dreaded steps down seedy RER corridors for an hour commute away from coveted gardens, museums, and boulangeries. No resentful stares at tourists setting off to enjoy a day of culture and cuisine, while you're banished to the banlieues for seven hours. You are one of them now. I mean, sitting behind a desk all day can be simply delicious when you can taste Paris through an open window.

Audrey Tautou as Amélie Poulain. [Online image] 2001.

Provençal Promises

When I’m in Provence, I can’t help feeling back in Southern California. The same sweetness of star jasmine beckons me to breathe in memories of my backyard; the same rhythmic rasping of insect legs sings to me of fleeting summer promises. Only they don’t bother waiting till dark—and they have earned a more melodic name than “cricket.” Cicadas. I used to dream about them. The sophisticated, continental cousins of Jiminy and company. I wanted to belong to their world. To gaze at their surroundings: marshlands and stone houses; lavender fields and parched dirt paths. And the sea beyond. To prostate myself before them and tell them that I’m ready for more.

Cast from La Gloire de mon père as the Pagnol family. [Online image] 1989.

Ready to Sing Red, White, and Blue Backwards?

People here often ask if I've applied for French citizenship yet, but no one's really tried to convince me to make La Marseillaise my national anthem--until the other day at my local French employment agency. "But don't you feel French? Your children, they will be French," my conseiller said. "They will have la mentalité française--it is much different from la mentalité américaine, non?"
"Uh, yeah, kinda different," I managed, as my mind started to whirl in blue, blanc, rouge: "My kids are going to be French? How has this never occurred to me?" Suddenly I pictured skinny little bourgeois teenyboppers with tight jeans and Longchamp bags, strutting along in the shade of chestnut trees and giggling into cellphones. No after-school sports. Except maybe horseback riding. Or badminton. "Well, don't you feel French?" she was asking me again. I gulped. Thank God French has so many round-about ways to say non.

Madeleine LeBeau as Yvonne. [Online image] 1942.

Finger Food

The French are experts at eating finger food. At a cocktail, you won't see them grappling for hand sanitizer or searching for the toothpicks and napkins. They're trained early on as children in the art of appetizers: as soon as they can walk, they're taught to pass demurely from guest to guest at apéro time with a careful grip on a bowl of gâteaux salés (why call a chip a chip?) or cherry tomatoes, pausing just the time needed for each person to choose a nibble or two and coo, "Merci Mademoiselle." By the time they're old enough to attend a formal pince-fesse ("bottom pincher"!) with glasses of bubbly and elegant trays of canapés, navettes, and petits fours, they're balancing two chamagne flutes in one hand while slurping down raw oysters with the other.
But we Americans have our revenge on taco night!

Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins as Josh Baskin and Susan [Online image] 1988.