NotJackKerouac

Unknown singer records album of songs by unknown songwriters

2006-12-03T19:14:00.002-08:00

Not the best business plan for an album. That's the reason albums shouldn't have business plans.

Slaid Cleaves is an Austin songwriter with solid sales, some regional praise, and one of the best songs ('Broke Down') exported from Texas in last decade. His latest album, entitled Unsung, features covers of lesser known artists. The results, listen for yourself. I think, wow. Provided in italics are Cleaves words about each performer.

"Flowered Dresses" (written by Karen Poston)
"Here's yet another poignant picture of loss and longing from the pen of Karen Poston. In the studio, I kept choking up on the line about 'hugging my knees, holding my breath.' "

"Call It Sleep" (written by Chris Montgomery)
"Chris had a band in Austin with his girlfriend, Karen Poston, called Aunt Beanie's First Prize Beets. Right about the time they were breaking up (both band and couple) he played this for me and a few friends backstage after a poorly attended gig of mine at Jovita's in South Austin. We all knew he had just written his best song."

"Fairest of Them All" (written by Ana Egge)
"I first heard Ana when she was playing open mics and I was doing sound. Still in her teens, she was making a big impression on people all over town. I was intrigued but not quite convinced until I heard this one. It's one of those great songs, cinematic and mysterious, where you find yourself asking -- wait a minute. What just happened there? " (Two things to listen for: a great use of the word 'bitch'; Mary Gauthier singing backup.)

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To prove my point, here's a link to Slaid Cleaves' "Broke Down." If you can't download this, raise a middle finger to iTunes and then seek it out on the Web.

And to think, people are still giving Alanis hell about the misuse of ironic.

2006-11-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

Below are lyrics pulled from The Who's new track, Mirror Door.

Howlin' Wolf and Ol' Link Wray, Dave Van Ronk and Doris Day,

Bobby Darin and Brownie McGee, Elvis, Buddy, and Eddie C.

Music makes me, makes me strong, Strong vibrations make me long,

Long for a place where I belong, You will find me in this song.

Notice anything wrong with the above list of now-dead-and-gone performers? One's still in the buffet line. Doris Day, at 82, is alive and smiling in Carmel, CA. When Pete Townshend was informed of this in a recent issue of Q magazine, he responded, "I was convinced she was dead."

Were you at the Fillmore in January of '69 when Zeppelin did that 13-minute version of 'Dazed and Confused?'

2006-11-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Concert Vault, lying in response to that question just got a hell of a lot easier.

This site catalogs, and streams free of charge, Bill Graham Presents concerts from 1965 to the late '80s (The Band to Big Country) at venues like Fillmore East and Winterland.

Best part: the sound quality is amazing.

He is what he is

2006-10-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Willie Nelson's rumored statement about his recent marijuana bust: "It's a good thing I had a bag of marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. I'd be dead by now."

Bastards of Young

2006-10-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

I don't like MASHUPS.

I thought Danger Mouse's Grey Album - mashing Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles' self-titled album (also known as the White Album) - was interesting.

But next time someone pushes a mashup on me, I'm going to simply push play on an entire album from Alvin and the Chipmunks.

"I Saw" No.-Something & No.-Something Else

2006-10-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

SAT: A rotund Larry Hagman walking alone on the Third Street Promenade. Considering I thought he was dead, he looked great.

SUN: Just out of the water, Brandon Boyd of Incubus riding a beach cruiser on the bike path in Venice. He was in jeans, no shirt, carrying a surf board. To give perspective, Brandon looked better than Larry.

Talkin' revolution

2006-10-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

There's a place off 1-40 in Amarillo called the Big Texan Steak Ranch. They serve a 72-ounce steak and if you can eat it in an hour, it's free. Since 1962, tens of thousands have attempted. Only 8,000 or so have cleaned their plate.

With So Much More, songwriter Brett Dennen has ordered a meal usually reserved for the likes of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Van Morrison. I'm impressed. Though, it appears he's only managed to get through half of it, just like Ben Harper, John Mayer and David Gray.

You tell me:

"Ain't No Reason"

"I Asked When"

It took talking animals to get to this. I would've preferred one, maybe two, solo records.

2006-10-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

" ... when you first leave a group, you figure I'll go out on my own or get another group. Then five or 10 years pass, and you realize you're damn lucky if you get one really good band in your life." - Paul Westerberg, quoted in the LA Times.

Fans of Antony and the Johnsons should check out ...

2006-10-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

... the music video for Chris Garneau’s 'Relief.'

---

Those asking, who's Antony and the Johnsons? Here's a must-have with Lou Reed, entitled 'Fistful of Love.'

Why isn't anyone writing great protest songs?

2006-10-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

Write something, then define what it means. As opposed to, think about what it should mean and then write it.

James McMurtry's heart is in the right place, just not sure this song gets there.

BTW: McMurtry's one of my favorites in this realm, on the heels of Steve Earle. Bob Dylan, in recent years, is one of my biggest disappointments, on the heels on me.

Autumn 2006: Songs, bands I'm digging

2006-10-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Hold Steady, "First Night"

The Postmarks, "Goodbye"

Sparklehorse, "Morning Hollow"

Ben Kweller, "Penny On the Train Track"

Tom Waits, "Bottom of the World"

Raise a Bone

2006-09-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Because we don't know the exact day, and because I can, let's make Sunday her 13th birthday.

Photo courtesy of PlainofMyBrain

Palace Does Portland

2006-09-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

How did I miss the buzz around Old Joy? Fans of Will Oldham should check out the trailer. The movie is opening in theaters across 33 cities starting now.

The hook is the best use of that useless girl from the Sound

2006-08-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

Heard ...
Andy Langer's weekly podcast, again, and liked it. Clocking in at just over 5 minutes each week, this large-footed critic (pictured here) nails the need-to-know rock notables.

Saw ...
Cypress Hill's B-Real pull up to the Rainbow on Sunset in a new model Caddy, park in the alley, step out, backed by a cloud of the funny, funny. For those wondering if he's getting enough to eat, the answer is yes.

FYI: Today's headline refers to Langer's opinion of Cobra Starship's Maja Ivarsson and the movie track, ""Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)."

Eight treadmills and a microphone

2006-08-03T09:13:00.000-07:00

This clip is a must-see.

**Thanks to NJK reader Wendy

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-04-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome back for the fourth installment from J.S. Bankston.

—Thursday, March 2: JSB/YSL—

By James Scott Bankston

James had come by my room Wednesday night right after I’d gotten in, but before I took my shower and bath. He had brought a video-camera in order to conduct interviews with me every night, but we were all too tired that night. Nyssa was already asleep. None of us had stayed at the Louvre until closing.

He noticed how my toes were all crumpled inward as if I’d been in an industrial accident, and took his leave, but not before mentioning that he and Nyssa were sleeping in–the Louvre had just kicked their asses. I agreed I was going to do likewise. I wasn’t going to set an alarm–I’d wake up when I felt like it. It was also at this time I started rewriting my travel agenda and schedule, marking out things I didn't think I'd have time to see or that would require a painful amount of walking.

As it was I woke sometime after noon, and went to check on J&N. Nyssa was still buried under the covers and James was barely awake. I arranged for them to meet me at the café on the corner later on. Just as I was walking out the maid, who was young and blonde and goofy and every bit what you would imagine in a French chamber maid, came by and asked if I was part of the “menage” in J&N’s room. I tried to make it clear that no, I wasn’t involved in a “menage” with anyone, and that I had my own room and that the people in this room were still wanting to sleep. She asked if she could come in and make the room up, but James appeared at the door and said he didn’t want maid service today. She then asked if they wanted extra towels, or “serviettes.” James didn’t understand this, but I told the maid yes and handed the towels to James.

Downstairs I went into the sun room of the café and had an omelet with champignons and some excellent coffee. I’d not finished my second cup when J&N appeared outside. I gestured for them to let me finish my coffee, but they started walking down the street, so I had to run after them. We window-shopped at one of the amazing comic book stores in the neighborhood, then stopped in at a Greek deli that J&N would patronize for the duration of their trip.

We went to the neighborhood internet café and I checked Jennifer’s Fred status reports from the last few days. (I’d obviously been too tired to check Wednesday night.) She was keeping him far away from the doggies with kennel cough. He was dribbling urine in the house and keeping her awake at night, which was making her panic, as she was starting her strict training for an “Iron Man” competition. But by the last few e-mails Fred was calming down, sleeping soundly at night, and had gotten over howling for me. He had found a good, warm spot in Jennifer’s back yard, where he could lay in the warm grass all day and sleep, where Jennifer could watch him as she worked at her desk.

I was quite relieved.

J&N and I had decided to take it easy for the day. At first James said we’d venture no further than across our street, but then we thought it might be good to check out St. Chapelle, which is not too far from Notre-Dame. Anyway, it was a fine, sunny day, with crisp air–a good day to stroll around at a leisurely, normal pace.
We looked for a few minutes at the stalls of the booksellers along the Seine. I saw many old prints I would’ve liked to have purchased, but I was afraid they’d get torn up if I carried them around with me all day, so I wound up not buying any.

St. Chapelle is located in a courtyard of the Palais du Justice, so we had to wait about thirty minutes in line at a sally-port to get in. One line was for people who had business with the courts, and the other for tourists. There were heavily-armed military police on the sidewalk, and when some man started yelling something from deep inside the sally-port, the police climbed up onto the barricades to see what was going on.

J&N and I wondered for a second if the screaming man was about to set off a bomb or something. It occurred to me that if a major incident happened and I got a photo of it, I could sell the photo to Getty or Corbis or AP and make enough to pay for my trip. But then other people in the front of the line began laughing at what the man was screaming, and the mood calmed down.

I made it into the Palais du Justice and through the bag screening device well ahead of J&N and got to stand in the hallway and watch policemen and black-robed lawyers mill around amongst the cigarette smoke. It was like a scene out of a Simenon novel.

There was a couple ahead of James and Nyssa in the line. When the couple noticed there was a bag screening ahead of them the man pulled a steak knife out of his backpack and his girlfriend buried it deep inside an obscure pocket. The police found the knife and pulled the couple off to the side, but James and Nyssa were processed and sent on their way before they could see what happened next.

St. Chapelle had been built to house the Crown of Thorns, a relic that is now kept at Notre-Dame and is brought out for Adoration the first Friday of every month and every Friday during Lent. (Sadly, I didn’t get to see it this trip.) The ground floor of St. Chapelle, though, attractive by any standards, had been designed for the use of the common folk, and today houses a gift shop. The upstairs chapel, however, had been reserved for royalty.

The second floor of St. Chapelle seems to hardly have any walls at all–just panels of stained glass. The designs, depicting scenes from the entire Bible, are so involved I hardly knew where to start looking. Between each window is a statue of an Apostle.

I got some good photos while I was in there, but there were some (an elegant Japanese woman in a floor-length black cape, a shot of the altar taken while kneeling on the floor on, appropriately enough, a royal French fleur-de-lis) that didn’t work out so well.

St. Chapelle did not look quite as I’d imagined it–I expected it would be larger, just as I thought Notre-Dame would be taller and less squat than it is. Both were, however, splendid.

This trip to Paris turned into, rather unexpectedly, a series of tests whereby I was to confront my fears. St. Chapelle has something I really don’t like–circular staircases, especially steep, Medieval stone staircases. Steep circular staircases always make me feel as if I’m going to trip and fall and break my neck, and I always have to ascend or descend them very, very slowly.

J&N’s house, while not having a circular staircase, does have a steep staircase with sharply-turning wedge-shaped steps. During the two months I lived with them Fred and I stayed in the Library on the second floor, so every night I had to carry Fred up those stairs, and every morning carry him back down again. The stairs were made even more treacherous by the fact J&N use the wider (read “safer”) outer portion of the treads to store and display things, forcing the person using the stairs to the inner, less safe portion. J&N both admit they trip on the stupid things at least once a year.

But I somehow managed to get down the stairs at St. Chapelle without incident. We left the Palais du Justice by stepping through an elaborate, gilded gate guarded by gendarmes in kepis. We were all feeling good enough we decided to explore some more, so we went over to the Right Bank, prowled through the carnival-like neighborhood of Les Halles (former home to the famous Parisian food market), and found the church of St. Merry in Beaubourg.

The entrance facade of St. Merry was covered in netting–apparently all the stonework is falling off. Inside were two mentally ill homeless men, who were yelling nonsense. One had a towel over his head, worn like a djellaba, with a crown of thorns worn over that. No one tried to run him off for his blasphemy. Outside a street musician was urinating on the church. Where was an Inquisition when it was needed? (James told me later that the reason he wanted to see St. Merry was for all the occult symbols that appear inside and outside of the church, the most famous being a carving of the idol Baphomet over the entrance facade.)

We took pictures of the cartoon-like fittings by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely in the fountain in the Place Igor Stravinsky, then stopped at a parapet overlooking the Place Georges Pompidou to watch a street magician.

The magician, who resembled balding American performer David Cross, was already halfway through his act. He had stuck two little boys in a cardboard box that was taped shut and standing on a flimsy-looking table. He had a group of adult volunteers holding wooden spikes. He then jabbed the spikes into the box while the kids inside howled in pain. The children in the audience, who were sitting on the sloping pavement, were enthralled by this, though one really small boy kept running up in a panic–though the magician worked this distraction into his act rather well.

After running the boys through, the magician pulled out the spikes, then yanked out the boys, set them on their feet, and grabbed them by their necks and bent them forward so they could take their bows. Then he gave each a chocolate bar and sent them on their way. The audience loved it and as J&N and I made our way down to put some coins in the magician’s hat, I commented laughingly, “That just goes to show that language is no barrier. Everyone can appreciate the humor in watching our fellow man in physical pain.”

We passed a well-stocked postcard shop and made our way to “Flunch.” James had spoken at great length about Flunch, saying how it had been one of his favorite places to eat on the cheap during his last visit to Paris. And though the idea of eating fast food in Paris was repugnant to me, I was rather curious what it was like, and anyway, I wanted a souvenir of the mascot, “Flunchy.”

We descended to the basement level, I dodging the gobs of spit and phlegm on the steps. But once we got inside, J&N were heart-sick. Flunch had dropped its fast food approach for a cafeteria set-up. J&N drifted from one food station to another as if in mourning. (They later discovered that the other Flunches in town still served fast food, but that this one by the Pompidou had been turned into "the fancy Flunch.")

I got some paella, custard, cheese, and some other things, but I wasn’t all that hungry in the first place. I found us a table, but the dining room had the fecal odor of a gas station men’s room. I just picked at my food. While James was in the toilet, another dinner, a drunken Brit who could barely keep his eyelids open, started talking to Nyssa. He was just tickled to death that non-native Parisians were coming in to eat at Flunch.

I wanted to go to the Pompidou Centre, and since J&N don’t like modern art, and have already been to the Pompidou once before, we took our leave. After a quick peek in a bookstore, I went to see the reconstruction of sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s studio in front of the museum, then blew a small fortune on postcards at that shop across the street. (They had postcards of many of my favorite classic French movies. What could I do?)

Then I went over to the entrance to the Pompidou’s exterior escalators, which was guarded by security men in black Yves St. Laurent anoraks. (There was none of the clip-on ties or uncomfortable polyester uniforms like we had when I was a sorority house security guard.) I flashed my Museum Pass and was told to enter on the other side of the building.

The lobby of the Pompidou is another one of those great public spaces, like the Louvre’s Pyramid, that is always aswirl with masses of people from all over the world. There’s a great energy there. I made a beeline for the excellent art bookstore, and somehow managed to not buy any of the architecture, cinema, or photography books there.

Back in the lobby I saw a young couple sitting on the floor, making out. Young people make out everywhere in Paris. Of course the city is known as a place for love and romance, but nevertheless I've always found public intimacy strange, even unsettling. Still, I noticed that from where I was standing a large neon arrow was pointing directly down at this couple, so naturally I got a few shots of that, though they were less than perfect.

I took to escalators to the top floor and got some excellent shots of the skyline, though I was rather uncomfortable being six stories off the ground with just a rail and some Plexiglas to protect me from death. There was a special exhibit on that floor, but they were charging extra for that, so I skipped it and went down to the north end of the glassed-in walk-way. I was too lazy to walk back to the escalators, so I took the elevator down one floor, which put me off at an open-air walk-way. This was scary to me. I don’t like being high up, and I especially don’t like being high up in the open air.

One floor was hosting what looked like a private party for art students. The floor displaying the regular collection of modern art was closed until the end of the month, and was now hosting a private Yves St. Laurent party. (It was, after all, the end of “Fashion Week.”) At each escalator landing a pair of rake-thin YSL models stood guard, wearing high heels and black leather outfits with mini-skirts. They looked a cross between Robert Palmer girls and Nazi dominatrices.

There was, however, a long-term “temporary” show on one floor–something called “Big Bang” that “celebrated destruction and creation in 20th century art.” There were eight major divisions to the display (Destruction, Construction/Deconstruction, Archaism, Sex, War, Subversion, Melancholy, and Re-Enchantment), and over forty subdivisions (including Oblivion/Memory, Pathos/Death, Sacrilege, The Sleep of Reason, Mirror/Entropy, Geometric Space, Grotesque, and the Uncanny). It was just the sort of over-intellectualized thing the French excel at and that I so enjoy. Some of the better-known modern “Old Masters” represented included Bacon, Warhol, De Kooning, Pollock, Mondrian, Judd, Klee, Moholy-Nagy, Duchamp, Picasso, Arp, Dali, Braque, Magritte, Starck, Oldenburg, Cornell, and Matisse, but there were works by many other more contemporary artists as well.

In the “Monochrome” room, where everything was, naturally, pure white, I encountered three young people, garishly and colorfully dressed, with dyed Mohawks. I wanted to take their picture, as they made such a contrast to all the whiteness, but I was afraid if I did so without asking they’d get hostile, but if I did ask their permission they’d likely pose in an unnatural way, would interfere with and therefore spoil my process of creation, so I gave up on the idea altogether.

As I strolled around, the soles of my feet were tickled by the thumping of the music at the YSL party a story below. Why wasn't I down there, with the rich, the famous, the beautiful?

The last exhibit in the show was a film installation by Bill Viola called “Five Angels For The Millenium,” and featured projections of five different films (Creation, Ascending, Fire, Departing, and Birth) in a room that was otherwise so dark I didn’t dare to walk more than a few feet into it out of fear of stumbling in to someone.

Back in the lobby I went to the Information Desk to try to find out where the nearest cab stand was. I was waited on by a rather formal middle-aged woman with a moderate level of English language skills. She told me to go out the door, turn right, go up the steps, go right again, and the cabs would be on the corner. I said, “Oh, over by the Flunch?,” and the woman let out a big, healthy laugh of agreement.

I checked out the YSL femme bots again, watched a crowd line up in front of a movie theater (I wish I’d made it to the movies while in Paris), and briefly considered loitering around the Pompidou to see if anyone famous showed up, but the evening was still pretty young and I knew famous people wouldn’t show up until very late.

I hailed a cab. My driver was an older woman with short white hair and a turtleneck who was the spitting image of an Austin rare book dealer I know. While talking with her I said I was from Austin, Texas, but she initially thought I was saying she had an “ancien taxi” (old taxi). I cleared that up and we had a charming talk all the way down the Boulevard St. Germain.

J&N showed up with their video-camera shortly after I got out of the bath. I was wearing boxers and a t-shirt. They brought me a pair of scissors they’d bought at the Muji stationary store at the Forum Les Halles, and I used them to cut out pieces of moleskin to apply to my blistered feet. During the filming James got very red and announced, “Um, you’re flopping out there. I saw your 'Little Soldier’s helmet.'” Nyssa got very embarrassed and buried her head. I got embarrassed as well, and said, “Well, why are you filming me when I’m not completely dressed?,” but James assured me no nudity got on camera.

This is probably a good time for me to put in a few words on French television. I didn’t have that many channels and usually only turned the thing on to keep me company at night before bed. (I listened to the radio in the morning while getting ready and am sad to report that Paris has embraced one of the worst aspects of American culture–insipid morning drive-time radio shows with silly, blabbering hosts.)

There was a hilarious ad for “Deadwood” in French. (Comment dit-on “cocksucker”?) And whoever dubs Sam Waterston into French for “Law and Order” makes him sound like a pissy, snitty, nancy boy. I saw the end of “Some Like It Hot” in English with French subtitles, and part of a German movie with little sound and less dialogue, that seemed to be about a stout woman with an obsessive-compulsive desire to clean her house around the clock. It wasn’t so much that the movie was boring as it was an amazingly accurately depiction of what boredom actually feels like, brought to the screen.

And then there was this comedic talk show with a host who was a cross between David Letterman and Benny Hill. The set was a sort of theater-in-the-round, and all the guests sat around a huge table and commented while the host zeroed in on one guest at a time. The only guest I recognized was Guillaume Depardieu, actor son of Gerard.

But the program had a variety show aspect to it as well, rather like the Latin American hit “Sabado Gigante.” At one point the host went over to talk to his sidekick behind a counter that was slightly less than waist-high. The conversation turned sexual, because two flesh-colored sock puppets that looked suspiciously like penises rose up from behind the counter and in front of the men. The penises began talking. As the names of famous and beautiful French women were invoked, the sock puppets got taller and longer and more rigid until they were several feet long. But when the subject changed they began to shrink and detumesce into themselves.

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-03-29T14:19:00.001-08:00

In this third installment, J.S. Bankston spends a $1,000 on books, experiences another bathroom or two and has a life's worth of images, realized.
__________

— Wednesday, March 1: Paris Gets Medieval on my Ass —

By James Scott Bankston

James had planned on getting up early in order to get pictures of sunrise at Notre-Dame. Years ago my friend Rex told me that watching the sunrise over Notre-Dame was one of the most incredible sights he’d experienced. I set my alarm early so I too could see sunrise at Notre-Dame, but by the time I got there the sun was mostly up. I did, however, get a nice shot of the east end of Notre-Dame and the Square du Jean XXIII covered in a light dusting of snow.

As I walked around the back side of the Cathedral I noticed what many old Parisian churches have: a fenced-in yard for the storage and restoration of fallen gargoyles and other stone ornaments. It was here that J&N found me.

J&N didn’t have a cell phone that would work in Paris, and I wouldn’t have a cell phone if my life depended on it, so we arranged several times during the trip to meet in specific locations at set times. If one party didn’t show in 15 or 30 minutes, the other was free to go on to the next site. We didn’t arrange this often during the trip and when we did I was invariably the one who showed up late.

I told J&N that I doubted I’d do any more major shopping during the trip, as I’d found most of what I’d come for the previous day. (These words would soon mock me.)

We arranged to meet between 12 and 12:30 in the Louvre, by the statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, then we went our separate ways.

I went into Notre-Dame for Ash Wednesday Mass. I took a good seat halfway up the nave, near a two-story high carved wooden pulpit, and watched the janitors buff the stone floors. The bells for 8am Mass began to ring and I didn’t see that many people taking seats. I moved up a bit. Then I started noticing people filing in up at the altar, and they didn’t look like they were in the choir.

After a bell rang inside the church I got up, walked up the ambulatory on the right, and realized the people going to the altar were regular worshippers. 8am Mass is never a big draw, not even at Notre-Dame on a Holy Day of Obligation; there were maybe fifty people on hand for Mass, and we were all being seated at the altar, in the old wooden choir stalls. I felt like a medieval monk as I took my seat and kneeled on the stone floors to receive the ashes on my forehead.

Mass was presided over by two African priests and I was seated next to a young professional man who, though impeccably dressed, had problem flatulence throughout the service. And oddly, when the time came for us all to shake hands with one another, my fellow worshippers greeted me by saying, "Thank you." The whole service was incredibly moving and made me feel all the more tied to history.

After that, I grabbed an espresso and plain croissant at an Alsatian café across the street, then crossed over to the Right Bank of the Seine in time to watch all the Parisians head off to work. I melded into the crowd and passed the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), where a crew was working on the ice skating rink, then cut past the closed La Samaritaine department store, went into the church of St. Germain L’Auxerrois (the bells of which announced the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572), and took some pretty decent pictures, then cut along the north side of the Louvre along the Rue Rivoli (a street James enjoyed calling "Rue de Ravioli"), before turning in at the Palais Royal, the childhood home of Louis XIV and now the site of chic shops. I’d seen the Palais Royal in movies before–it’s popular for its huge courtyard, filled with clipped trees and surrounded by lengthy colonnades.

From there I went to check out a few "passages," early 19th century breezeways covered with glass-and-iron roofs that were lined with shops and that served as the prototypes for modern shopping malls. Some passages even included restaurants, hotels, and single rooms that were rented out by prostitutes. The passages in some ways became microcosms of the 19th century city, and a study of the passages of Paris became the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s magnum opus.

A security guard searched my bag at the Galerie Colbert, but there wasn’t too much to that place–it was mostly being used for college classrooms. The adjoining Galerie Vivienne was much more interesting. I found a Jean-Paul Gautier shop there, and across the way, stairs to Gautier’s atelier. (I accidentally got in the way of a Gautier employee as he was coming to work.)

Rounding a corner I found a group of art students (Paris is swarming with art students) sitting on the floor under a dome, making sketches. Some were actually doing the bit where they held out their pencils at arm’s length, squinted at them, and marked the length of the objects they were looking at with their thumbnails–I only thought such things happened in old movies.

I exited, crossed the street, went through a mini-passage, and was going to go back through the Palais Royal when a young woman told me that way was blocked for a few hours. I tried another way, and was stopped by a young man, but this time I saw a cluster of cameras and lights in the courtyard–somebody was filming a movie.

I went around the western exterior of the Palais and took pictures of the equipment trucks and craft services people. Finally some guy walked by and said, "Why don’t you get a picture of me? I’m a typical Frenchman."
–What the hell.
–You know movies?
–Yes. Are they filming one here?
–Yes. American movie. You know American movies?
–Yes, very well.
–Well, this is American movie called "The Sopranos." You heard of?
–Indeed I have.
And no, I didn’t see James Gandolfini or anyone famous. I did slip back into the far end of the Palais courtyard and get some nice pictures of people going to work, a woman feeding pigeons, and a little girl on a scooter, but that’s about it.

I passed the Comedie Francaise and a gilded equestrian statue of Joan of Arc that was glinting brilliantly in the morning sun, and headed down the Rue Rivoli to W.H. Smith, a chain bookstore that is the UK equivalent of Barnes & Noble. I’d already had the presence of mind to apply online for a discount card there when I was back in the States.

I passed tacky souvenir stores, as well as the Hotel Meurice, which was the headquarters for German High Command during World War II, and was later part-time home to Salvador Dali, who used to walk through the lobby with his pet ocelot on a leash. But before I got to W.H. Smith I glanced at the windows of Galagnani, the oldest English-language bookstore in Europe, and I got sucked in.

Galignani was on my to-do list, but I had thought it was located closer to the Opera Garnier. I managed to fight the temptation to buy any architectural books, but when I came across the history section, especially the European royalty subsection, I started grabbing. These were either the kind of books I’d never seen in America or had only seen advertised in British magazines, the sort of books I’d design for myself in a perfect world.

Soon a clerk walked over and asked if he could take those books for me. I asked if they did overseas shipping, and when he said they did, my fate was sealed. I wasn’t about to lug a big stack of books on my back around the Louvre all day, but if they’d be willing to ship them ...

I got some more royalty books, then moved over to the entertainment/music/film section. I couldn’t have been in there more than a half-hour, but when I left I had no books on my person, but my bank account was over $1000 lighter.

W.H. Smith was rather a let-down after that. They supposedly had the best selection of English-language magazines in Paris, but I really didn’t see much that I couldn’t get back in Austin.

By this point I was pretty sure I couldn’t get to J&N in time, even if I ran. I strode through the Tuileries Gardens which, since it was still winter, looked rather bleak. I passed a pit full of little trampolines for kids, and an ancient carousel, and thought how delightful it must be to be a child or to have children in Paris. I took pictures of various statues, including one of a naked man in anguish that I dubbed "Credit Card Debt."

Several Gypsy girls approached me asking if I spoke English and carrying handwritten pleas for money, but I found the cure for them was to look straight ahead, and firmly announce, "Non, merci!" (J&N observed that the Parisian Gypsies looked and dressed rather like the grubby, hygenically-challenged Zendik Farm cultists who used to hang out on the Drag in Austin, begging and trying to sell smeared copies of their newsletter.)

The Pyramid of the Louvre was a fascinating place for people-watching. The Japanese tour groups, for instance, were usually headed by a little woman holding a small flag or tiny umbrella over here head like a drum major’s baton, so the group could see where to go.

I wanted to get a week-long Paris museum pass, so the people at the Information Desk directed me down a long hallway. (By some complicated formula J&N had decided that for a Museum Pass to be cost effective for them they would have to see three museums a day. For me, just the trouble saved by getting to bypass lines at the entrances was worth the cost.) But the line to get the Museum Pass was pretty long–there were five or six stations in the ticket office, but since it was noon, only one of them was manned, by a woman who looked like a cross between Coretta Scott King and Nichelle Nichols. Eventually some guy got back from lunch and the line started to move, but I’d been waiting at least 30 minutes by then.

Still, after getting my Pass I was in no great hurry to tackle the Louvre just yet. It was open until 9:45pm that day anyway. So I went to the bathroom and had lunch under the Pyramid–a chicken sandwich and several Cokes. Some school girls on a second level waved at me through a diamond-shaped window, so I waved back.
Starting out with the north or "Richelieu" wing, I looked at 18th and 19th century French sculpture, then headed over to check out the Mesopotamian galleries when I ran into J&N, though I lost them again after I saw the Steele of Hammurabi and the enormous winged Assyrian man-bulls.

This was also about the time I began noticing and taking pictures of how the museum-goers were reacting to certain works of art. In the room with the Assyrian bulls were dozens of art students, sitting cross-legged on the floor, their drawing pads on their laps, looking, well, just like the sculptures of seated Mesopotamian scribes in the next room. I realize now that to adequately explore the subject of museum-goers and their reaction to art I would have had to just set my camera up in one gallery for the better part of a day. Maybe in the future ...

I needed to go to the bathroom again, and the one I found was a unisex model–which was very discombobulating for an American. To complicate matters I found myself locked in a stall for a bit, until I could manage to undo the lock. I looked at more French sculpture. There was one of a reclining nude who was pausing in reading her book–the cushion upon which she was reclining was sculpted so delicately it looked to be made of actual fabric. Another sculpture depicted a little boy playing with a turtle, his fingers just inches from the turtle’s snapping beak.

On another floor I toured the lavish private suite of Napoleon III and saw the throne of Napoleon I and Louis XVIII’s bed (which looked too small for the morbidly obese king—I've since read the bed was made for Napoleon and later redecorated for Louis XVIII, and that Louis preferred sleeping on an iron cot at the foot of that bed).

In the Dutch, Flemish, and German paintings I saw Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I of England, and nodded at it as if we were old friends. I saw a self-portrait by Albrecht Durer, the artist I tried to draw like when I was a child, and was overwhelmed by a room of enormous allegorical pictures of Henri IV of France by Peter Paul Rubens. I began zipping through gallery after gallery, until I just happened into a room devoted completely to Rembrandt, and was moved to, if not tears, then at least moist eyes, by a self-portrait of the Master as an old man. For all the Rembrandts in the room, this one seemed to me to have the artist still living inside it.

There were so many sections I had to skip, so many works I just walked by. Doing this made me feel as if I was condemning those works to be thrown into an incinerator, to be henceforth forgotten by history, but I had neither the strength nor the time to see them all. I felt I was being unfaithful, that I was letting History and Culture and Human Civilization down, but while the spirit was willing, the flesh was all too weak.

I went back to the Pyramid and sat watching people and guzzling bottled water for at least an hour. A small family sat down by me and I had to restrain myself from making the provincial comment, "Oh, how cute! You taught your son how to speak French!"

Then I went to the south or "Denon" wing, which as far as familiar masterpieces go, probably has more "bang for your buck" than any other part of the museum. First off was the "Mona Lisa." I was surprised, since the "Mona Lisa" has been reproduced to the point it’s almost banal, but when in the split-second I saw her for the first time I teared up again. It’s odd seeing the genuine article of something that has been reproduced over and over. It was bizarre, for instance, when I met Richard Nixon in 1993, seeing the real-life model for that oft-caricatured face and hearing the rumbling voice that inspired so many comedians and impersonators.

A few months ago a former student of mine wrote about visiting the Louvre, that he had "seen [his] face reflected in the face of the ‘Mona Lisa,’" and I knew I had to do the same thing. And it didn’t take all that long for me to work my way through the crowd to the front of the line. I’d heard it sometimes takes hours to get to the "Mona Lisa." Maybe that's true in the summer, but it wasn't in March.

I saw a Madonna and Child from the Middle Ages. Though the composition was formal, the artist had enough of a grasp of real life to depict the Christ Child suckling on His fingers, just like a normal baby would. And I couldn’t help but wonder where the artist had gotten the robe he used as the model of that of the Virgin Mary–supposedly many portraits of the Madonna show her in robes imported from the Middle East, with Arabic words stitched along the hem announcing, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."

Here were Giottos and Fra Angelicos so close I could breathe on them, Raphaels with colors so fresh they could’ve been painted just weeks ago.

In the Grande Galerie a young Frenchman leaned against his girlfriend and took his shoes off, so he could walk around in his stocking feet. I chuckled at this–they turned, smiled, shrugged, and laughed. We didn’t have to know each other’s language to appreciate that all of us were suffering terribly from unbelievable pain in our feet, legs, and backs from all the walking and standing on marble floors.

There was a group of teenagers with wild hair and clothes that might have been seen as gang members in the US, but they were in the Louvre to look at art.

I started noticing the faces of the people in the paintings and sculptures in the faces of the museum-goers all around me. It was as if they stepped down out of their frames and off their pedestals and put on modern clothes. That classical physiognomy can still be found in Europe.

Two little French boys who couldn’t have been more than ten, were arguing over the relative merits of a St. Sebastian painted by Perugino. I felt an almost paternal sense of pride for them that they were so smart. Not far away was the St. Sebastian by Mantegna I’d admired since first grade.

But I think my favorite painting in the whole Louvre may just have been Guido Reni’s picture of David with the severed head of Goliath. In fact, when I first saw it I let out a laugh. David looks like such a punk, such a typical teenager. He’s leaning against a pillar, his feet crossed at his ankles, and Goliath’s huge sword is
on the ground. And he’s holding Goliath’s head at arm’s length as it rests on another pillar.

David is wrapped in a leopard skin, and is wearing a bright red cap with a huge ostrich plume sticking out of it. And he’s smirking, cocksure, as if killing giants is an everyday activity for him. He looks like any other teenaged boy in the world right now, with a sideways baseball cap and silly clothes, who thinks he’s cooler and smarter than he really is. The spirit of the painting is totally contemporary, though the work is actually 401 years old.

The rooms of large-format French paintings were also a revelation, with the colossal historical painting by Ingres, David, and Gericault. If I learned one thing on this trip, it was that Napoleon had the best public relations people in history. Those David paintings of Napoleon make him look so impressive. And it was amazing to see the famous picture of Napoleon crowning Josephine Empress (the Bonaparte family standing in Notre-Dame not far from where I’d been a few hours before). I studied the picture up close–how in character it was for Talleyrand to be painted with his nose in the air.

I finally saw in person another favorite painting from my childhood, Gericault’s picture of the cuirassier, sweeping his sabre over the back of his mount. As I surveyed "The Death of Sardanapalus" by Delacroix, I noticed for the first time, after years of looking at this picture, that the king is sprawling on a bed with huge elephant heads on the corners. And from there I walked a few feet, out to the hallway, and saw the "Winged Victory;" I’d never before noticed she is standing on a base shaped like a ship.

I took a quick look at the Michelangelo and Canova sculptures on a another floor, but totally skipped the ancient Roman and Etruscan works. Then I went back to the Pyramid and headed into the east or "Sully" wing. It was now late afternoon and I was walking as if I was club-footed. I was in serious agony at this point.
I’d hoped to see the "Venus de Milo," but wanted to reach her by the shortest route possible. Then, if I had any strength left, I was going to tackle French painting from the 14th to 19th centuries on an upper floor.
But serious "museum fatigue" had set in. This is a disease with progressive stages. First you start marking off whole schools, countries, and epochs from your "to see" list. Then you begin ignoring most of the labels, then the works themselves, stopping only to see the things you recognize. (This is when you really feel like an uncivilized boor.) Finally you don’t care what they have in the next gallery–you just want to get out of there and sit down.

I would walk through gallery after gallery, and come within a room of where I needed to go, only to find a locked door. I’d take an elevator that would run between only two floors. I’d walk down a flight of stairs, cross one room, go up another flight of stairs, and find myself no closer to my destination than I’d been five minutes before.

I finally got stuck in a labyrinth, the two floors of the Egyptian collection, which I had earlier, sadly, decided to skip. I saw some interesting things, but dear God–I wanted out. The sarcophagi were calling out for fresh blood, but I was determined that it not be mine. Finally, with great resentment that I was having to backtrack, I worked my way back through the excavated moat of the Medieval Louvre Castle, and stumbled back into the Pyramid. I asked directions to the nearest cab stand, and went halfway down the long hall to the Museum Pass office before I woke up and realized I was going the wrong way. I had long since stopped picking my feet up when I walked–I was just sliding them across the floor now. I took the escalators upstairs, and let out an audible "Thank God" when I got outside. (Nyssa’s mother, Tharelyn, later summed this day up as "Louvre 1, Tourist 0."

I’d been over-heated all day, as I had over-dressed, failing to take into account how much walking I would be doing or how warm Parisian interiors are kept in winter. I stumbled through the sally-port under the Richelieu Wing, and after some more wandering found the cab stand at the Place du Palais Royal. I could’ve kissed that cabbie square on the lips when he drove up–he was driving the most beautiful taxicab in all the world. I eased into the back seat and told him the address of my hotel. In our small talk on the way over, I revealed I was from Texas. He didn’t quite grasp this until I mentioned the word "cowboy." "Ah," he said, suddenly getting it. "Le cinema de John Wayne!" I smiled and said, "Yes. John Wayne. Jimmy Stewart. John Ford. That’s where I’m from."

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-03-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

J.S. Bankston has arrrived.

— Tuesday, February 28: Loving the Alien—

By James Scott Bankston

I had jazz playing on my headset and began to really get excited when I saw the clouds part and noticed the buildings and roads and cars of Paris beneath us. The Pilot announced we’d be deboarding by means of stairs–I looked back at J&N and we exchanged jubilant smiles and “thumbs-up”–we could walk down onto the tarmac like old-time celebs, with the paparazzi snapping our pictures. We landed, then taxied all over Charles De Gaulle for what seemed like thirty minutes. I pointed at a squat, grey hotel nearby and mouthed to James, “Look! It’s the Paris Hilton!,” but he didn’t understand me.

There were no photographers waiting for us when we stepped off the plane. I didn’t even get to kiss the ground like the Pope. Instead, we were led to a commuter bus.

It was cold and rainy out, and snowflakes the size of silver dollars had started falling. For some perverted reason, James hoped we’d have cold, snowy, inclement weather the entire time we were in Paris. He had brought along, just for that purpose, the most hideous jacket I have ever seen–a green Army surplus overcoat he’s taken all over the world for the last fifteen years. It has maybe one button left and every edge on it is frayed. It looks like something a homeless person would wear. He believes if he wears it he’ll scare off Gypsies and panhandlers.

I said, “You do realize, don’t you, that you won’t be able to get into any nice restaurants wearing that coat?,” and he said, “That’s okay.”

We were driven to a terminal, and walked up a wet flight of stairs to the Immigration gate. Between the entrance to the Immigration area to the inspection kiosks was a substantial area roped off with a zig-zag of elastic bands affixed to metal poles–you walked in, turned left, then right, then left, and on and on and on. Normally this configuration was set up to handle large crowds, but since there were so few of us we looked peculiar running through it. Our movements became almost balletic; overhead we must have looked like ping-pong balls released from the ceiling, hitting the floor, bouncing back up to the ceiling, then hitting the floor again, and on and on. Or we may have just looked like an old “Pong” video game. The silly grace and general pointlessness of our movements made everyone in the line laugh, and I called out to a woman behind me, “I wonder if I’m gonna get a food pellet when I get to the end of this maze!”

I was waved through Immigration without getting even so much as a stamp on my passport, then we went to the baggage carousel to get one of J&N’s bags. After that we went off in search of the RER commuter train station so we could get into town. I took the lead on this one, since James seems to have trouble processing the information on signs, TV monitors, and maps. It was exhilarating to hear all those foreign voices, to be surrounded by stylishly-dressed men and women, to see heavily-armed military police everywhere. (This last sight made the most normal location seem like a setting for imminent danger.)

We got to the station. I bought Metro tickets for the week. J&N only bought them for the day. (Actually, since J&N used the Metro so often during the trip, they were the ones who should’ve bought week-long passes. I hardly used the Metro at all.)

We encountered something we were to see many more times: a place with an escalator that went up but only a staircase going down. A small woman stood at the top of the stairs with an enormous bag, looking around frantically for help.

I felt uncharacteristically charitable, and with broken French, asked if she’d like me to lug the thing downstairs for her, then did so, to the great shock of James and Nyssa.

Our train arrived soon afterwards. At the first stop two African men got on board and began talking very loudly in French all the way into Paris. Some guy came out of the back of the train and began playing easy listening classics from the ‘70s on an accordion, then passed the hat, and finding tips skimpy, moved on into the next car.

I was surveying the passing scenery outside my window with great interest–the old factories, the endless walls of graffiti, the faux quaint working-class cottages built next to the rails, the high-rise housing projects with laundry and other crap hanging from each balcony, from which the riots had sprung not six month ago. James pointed out the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur off in the distance–it was a lot larger than I’d pictured it.

Before I knew it we were at the Notre-Dame Metro station, and J&N led me through the maze up to the surface, and there she was just a few hundred yards away–Notre-Dame Cathedral. I don’t remember exactly how I felt, but I do know I was so exhausted that day that I was a lot less excited than I would’ve been otherwise. Mainly I just wanted to get a shower.

We walked through the drizzle to my hotel, the Esmeralda, which is just a few feet away from the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and two blocks from Notre-Dame. J&N went off to their hotel, and we agreed to meet in an hour in front of the cathedral.

I walked into the hotel and identified myself. The desk clerk had me down as reserved for two days–I said that no, I had reserved for seven. He gave me a large skeleton key and told me to go to Room #5, on the stairs.

The room was not off a landing, but was in fact on the stairs–you walked into it directly from the middle of the staircase. I’d heard the locks were tricky in this place, but it took me over five minutes of twisting and rattling to get the key to open the lock. The staircase was filled with the overpowering stench of furniture polish. I knew this shit would get really old really fast.

Figuring to save money, I’d asked for the smallest room they had, with a bathroom down the hall. But I wasn’t ready for what I was getting. My room was tiny and dark, with battered paneling and wallpaper of an over-powering pattern. There was a beaten-up wardrobe whose doors hung open, a tiny sink, a shelf over the low doorway, and window that looked onto a light well cluttered with an unfinished construction project. There was a light over the sink, a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a fragile reading lamp on an over-sized bedside table, one side of which intruded into head of the narrow bed. The room was only as long as the tiny bed, and was overall not much bigger than a jail cell. The floor was covered with a threadbare carpet, and a board sunk under my right foot as I leaned forward to put down my bag.

This was not what I wanted. Not at all.

But first things first–I’d not showered in a day and was feeling greasy and nasty. I found a maid and asked where the bathroom was and she said it was one floor up. I gathered all I needed to shower and change, then went upstairs. In one room was a small sink and a toilet that took me awhile to flush.

The shower was located in a room off the maid’s closet. It was midday then, so the maids were busy cleaning–it took some doing for me to get them to leave so I could undress and shower. I set my towels and things on top of a trunk next to bags filled with the maids’s daily shopping.

I knew I couldn’t stay in this place. I was so depressed and upset I wanted to cry or something. (This feeling was no doubt exacerbated by my exhaustion.) The hotel was a dump, and my entire trip would be ruined and all that money wasted if I had to stay any longer. But could I get out of it? I’d told the guy at the desk I was staying for seven nights. Would he hold me to that? He had my credit card number from when I reserved back in the States. Would I be able to find an affordable hotel in this neighborhood? Would I have a bed for the night? I knew of several hotels in the area, sure, but did they have any vacancies?

It was almost time to meet J&N. By the time I got to the church they were nowhere to be seen. I was beside myself. I had to get this hotel thing resolved immediately before I did any sight-seeing. Where the hell were they? Finally I went inside the Cathedral, a place of beauty, history, and architectural significance I’d read about all my life, but I was so upset I didn’t notice any of it, because I was so busy scanning the crowd for J&N. I made a quick circuit of the building, then went back outside, where they finally turned up and I told them the situation.

James suggested I stay at his hotel, the Hotel Abbatial St. Germain, but I’d blown off that idea weeks ago–it cost more than I wanted to pay. I said I’d go off and search for some of the other hotels I knew of in the neighborhood, and we made tentative plans to meet somewhere, and off I flew in a frenzy.

For some reason I couldn’t find the addresses of those other hotels. I saw the Abbatial, and decided to pop in there after all, check their availability, and maybe look at their phone book. I had a confusing conversation with the desk clerk: she could accommodate me, yes, but I might have to switch rooms every day or so, taking a single one day, a double another, but then, no, it sounded like she could put me in one room all seven days and charge me one rate. I went to check out the room–it looked great. The clerk photo-copied my credit card just as J&N walked in, surprised to see me. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to be in the same room all week, but I filled out the register, then ran out to go get my stuff from the Esmeralda.

Once there I packed quickly, went downstairs, and told the desk clerk I was going to stay with friends instead, and offered to pay for one night, since I’d already used the room. This seemed to suit the clerk fine–in fact, he acted as if that sort of thing happened all the time.

I ran back to the Abbatial and unpacked again. My room (#15) was on the first (second) floor, at the top of the stairs and right off the elevator. It had a full bath with shower and tub, two large floor-to-ceiling casement windows that looked out onto Rue Des Bernardins and the Boulevard St. Germain, a double bed, and an alcove with a desk, tiny fridge, and ceiling-hung TV. I was paying more than J&N were for their fifth (sixth) floor room with the balcony and the Pantheon view, the hair dryer hose and a side table drawer were broken and the curtains were dangerously close to the radiator, but I didn’t care–at least I was out of the Esmeralda.

That latest crisis passed, I decided to make a fresh start with Paris, and J&N and I ventured forth and made our way back to Notre-Dame.

A sign said Notre-Dame had an English-speaking priest that was hearing Confessions at that time in the Cathedral. I’d not been to Confession or Mass in ages, and the next day was Ash Wednesday. There was no one in line, so I went on in.

In Notre-Dame, as in many older churches in Paris, the confessional is a modern steel-and-glass box set up inside a lofty old side chapel. The confessional is dimly-lit and furnished like a study, though from the outside it looks a bit like a police interrogation room. At Notre-Dame there were horizontal lines of frosted glass set into the regular glass to protect the privacy of the priest and the penitent.

I had never confessed face-to-face before. The priest was a kindly, pale old Frenchman. He didn’t even give me a penance, and part of his absolution was delivered in Latin, which I joked to James “makes it count double.”

Now that I was shriven, we continued our tour. I lit a candle and prayed Fred and I would be safely reunited. (I know this sounds superstitious, but I did this in every one of the churches I visited in Paris the entire week.) I saw a group of teenaged Japanese boys in their private school blazers and gear and commented, “Oh, I didn’t know Hogwarts had a Tokyo branch!” We stopped to photograph a statue of Joan of Arc in another chapel, but the light was too poor for me to adequately capture the amusing image of both the statue and a fire extinguisher standing in a corner.

We crossed back over to the Left Bank. James photographed me sitting on a wet bench in front of Shakespeare and Company, then we went to St. Julien-le-Pauvre, the oldest church in Paris, now run by Byzantine Catholics. St. Julien is a popular venue for small concerts and I picked up flyers for a Chopin program, an evening of Black gospel music, and a tribute to the castrati. But I already know way too much about castrated men as it is–after all, I do have quite a few married friends.

We walked a few more blocks and were about to go into St. Severin church, when I was stopped by an old woman cowering just inside the gates. J&N had already gone into the church without me. The old woman explained in broken English and French that she was from “Bosnie” and asked if I could I spare any money. I gave her a handful of change and started toward the church door, then she shuffled up with a US quarter in her dirty fingers, smiling through broken teeth, saying, “This one no good....Can’t use....Euro....Euro!”

I reached back into my pocket and fished out a few more Euro coins, and she fell to her knees and began thanking me with an effusiveness that I found embarrassing, startling, confusing, and humbling. She began crying, “Bless you! God bless you!,” and kissed my hand repeatedly. Now even with my colossal ego I couldn’t handle being treated like a god on the steps of a church. In my confusion, I put my right hand on her head as if I was a priest and said, “No, not me! Bless you!” She drew her hands together into a praying position and bowed repeatedly and thanked me, and I bowed as well and withdrew into the church, just as J&N came to check on me. James explained the woman was a Gypsy and that they will resort to any tactics to get money off tourist, but he figured I needed to learn the hard way. The old woman was still thanking me and smiling when I left the church a few minutes later.

It was maybe mid-afternoon now, and Nyssa was ready to turn in for the day, so she and James headed back to the hotel. I wandered into the Abbey, a narrow-aisled, cluttered, claustrophobia-inducing English-language bookstore run by a Canadian expatriate and bought a Bruce Chatwin book (appropriately enough), briefly checked out a news stand, then wandered around some more, until I stumbled into a wide north-south street I correctly guessed was the Boulevard St. Michel. A young woman hit me up for a few Euros. (Damn! I really should have been wearing that money belt inside my sweater.) I saw one of those Art Nouveau Metro signs, but was too tired to haul out my camera and take a picture.

I browsed among the sidewalk bins of of the Gibert Jeune bookstore, which occupies several buildings that line both side of the street. It was peculiar looking at book in a setting full of cigar smoke. I went inside the store–more escalators going up, with only staircases going down. I bought a literary magazine about Emile Zola, two coffee table books on Serge Gainsbourg and a fat collection of his complete lyrics, then briefly went across the street to the Gibert Jeune scholarly lit store. I strolled past restaurants, jazz clubs, and tiny cinemas, watched the traffic along the Quai St. Michel, and finally made my long-awaited visit to Shakespeare and Company.

For whatever reason, maybe the fact I was so tired, I was unimpressed. I saw nothing particularly rare or unusual in the store–nothing I couldn’t find in a new or used English-language bookstore in Austin. I tried to climb the ladder-like stairs to the second floor, but the risers were about a foot tall, and my backpack wouldn’t fit through the stairwell, so I said to hell with it, and backed down slowly and headed for the exit.

I found an internet café staffed by an American girl and tried to check my e-mail, but was unable to get to my regular account, so I used another to e-mail Jennifer and ask her to send me Fred status reports there.

I’d not eaten since that breakfast on the plane, so I did an uncharacteristic thing–I backtracked, and went uphill towards the area of the Sorbonne. I stopped at a clean little corner café/tea room/boulangerie, and after studying the outdoor menu, went inside and ordered a croque-monsieur (ham and cheese sandwich) and a bottle of Leffe beer. The proprietor asked me to take a seat, and I shifted the bag off my back and began jotting down notes about the day.

School children were dropping in to get snacks, college students were stopping for coffee on their way home, working people were buying bread. I kept seeing puffs of smoke rolling out from my right and thought it was from an oven–it turned out to be from two laborers who were smoking at the bar and tossing the butts on the floor.

I ate and drank slowly, savoring it all. I wrote in detail about what I’d seen thus far. I finished and paid my bill accurately and without trouble. With negligible French language skills I had ordered my first meal in a French restaurant and not comported myself like a fool.

I walked down the hill to the Boulevard St. Germain, and went into the “8 a Huit,” a small grocery store across from the Abbatial, and bought a couple “Cocas” (as Cokes are called over there) and a big chocolate bar, then went up to my room, showered again (I am the only person I know who actually uses all the towels they give you in a hotel), and made a brief survey of the TV channnels. Around 10pm I listened to bells from the church across the street and the “air raid”-style police sirens as they went off every fifteen minutes or so, and fell quickly to sleep.

My sleep was sound and dreamless, though I woke for some reason at 3am. I broke open a Coca and started on the candy bar, while snapping pictures of the wet streets outside my windows. The day had started with rain and snow, then moved on to sun and warmth, sudden winds and dark clouds, more rain and snow, then more sun, and so on and so on. I’d even bought an umbrella in a souvenir shop, knocking over a display stand in the process, but never got around to using it. Not even Texas has weather that fickle. Now at 3am snow was pushing its way through the rain again.

Was Fred okay? Was he lonely now? Was he convinced I’d left him forever? I had set up pictures of him on my bedside table. I hated myself for taking this trip. I felt so selfish and just wanted to get the damn thing over with now so I could get back to him.

These fears and second thoughts nagged me every night I was in Paris, though they dissipated each morning. I later learned Fred spent our first evening apart frantically pacing around Jennifer’s house, looking for me. Then after Jennifer had gone to bed he howled mournfully most every hour on the hour until sunrise.

Back in Paris I stared at the rainy streets, then put away my camera and snacks, straightened my bedding, and slipped back into dreamless sleep.

All photos by J.S Bankston; except 'Gypsy' photo by James Delaney

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-03-27T09:12:00.000-08:00

Just to recap. J.S. Bankston went against his 'genetic coding' and took his first plane ride from Austin, Texas to Paris, France. This is the first of many stories from that recent trip.

____________

The Two Loves: The Story of a Trip to Paris

by James Scott Bankston

— Monday, February 27-Tuesday, February 28: Getting There—
I come from a long line of people who didn’t travel. We came here from England between the early 18th and early 19th centuries, landed in the American South, headed west, and pretty much stayed put at whatever point we found ourselves in 1900. To live more than a three hour car journey from where you were born just wasn’t done. Such an idea was crazy talk. Travel was an expensive folly reserved for millionaires–not ordinary folk. Whenever the wife of one of my step-brothers used to drag her family to Europe every few summers, my father would ask her in all seriousness, “Why would you want to go over there? We’ve got all the same stuff here in the United States.”

My father lived to be 65, and as best as I can tell, his journeys outside Texas included a few jaunts to Oklahoma and New Orleans, a school trip he chaperoned to Washington, DC, New York City, and some border towns in Canada, and a late-in-life sweep of the Southwestern states. My mother, who will soon be 64, has flown on only two occasions, both round-trip Houston-to-Dallas flights–once to get married, and another time to buy furniture. My Great-Aunt Maurine was an exception: she was once our “poor relation” until her chain-smoking, over-insured husband died–then she became our “rich aunt.” She spent a good deal of the last decades of her life traveling. I think a few of my step-nephews may have gone overseas in the military, but for the most part, we have all stayed put.

So for me to actually consider taking a trip to Europe this year was nothing short of a rebellion against my genetic coding. Still, my friends James and Nyssa made such a persuasive case for going that I couldn’t help myself. I had the money (just barely). Even my dog-loving friend Jennifer agreed to look after my beloved Fred in my absence (and Fred is always the deal-maker or -breaker in anything I do). Before I knew it I had booked myself a hotel and bought American Airlines tickets with the intention of spending a week in Paris.

I devoted the weeks leading up to my departure studying my dozen or so guidebooks, watching a French movie just about every night, examining Paris maps in detail, listening to language CDs and French music and online broadcasts of Paris radio stations, and printing out a five-inch thick stack of Parisian research from the internet.

I got only four hours of sleep the night before I left because I was busy packing and repacking my bag. I was determined to limit myself to one carry-on, so I’d not have to worry with baggage checking and claims. As a result, I went with only the black pants and blue shirt I was wearing, four pairs of boxer shorts, three pairs of Lycra bike shorts for long walks, four t-shirts, one complete pair of long underwear, one black pullover sweater, a grey and black checked cap, a black leather jacket, eight pairs of socks, one pair of Doc Martens, and one pair of slippers, as well as Ziploc bags of toiletries and other items.

I was filled with excitement and dread-- dread mostly for betraying Fred, my only true friend, leaving him alone in a strange place for a week while I lived like a sultan. In truth I never got over feeling bad about this, and went to bed each night in Paris feeling I’d made a horrible, unforgivable mistake, and hoped the trip would just hurry up and get over with. Each morning I’d feel better, but the feelings would return every night when I got back to my hotel.

Nyssa’s mother Tharelyn drove us to the airport. We had to stop first at Jennifer’s to drop off Fred. All the way down there as I scratched Fred’s neck I felt like I was slashing his throat with a knife. He was too happy to know otherwise.

Fred seemed to take an immediate shine to Jen’s Border Collies Zoe and Truman, and waddled happily around the grounds, sniffing and peeing. Jen mentioned the neighbor dogs had recently come down with kennel cough–that gave me a new thing to worry and obsess about. I stepped in dog shit in the yard and held my legs up while Jen’s ex-husband Darren hosed the shit off my shoes. I got ready to leave, and bent down to give Fred kisses, but he didn’t stick around too long–Jen took the leash and he headed off with her without looking back.

In a way that was a relief. I was expecting a big, emotional send-off, with Fred clawing at the windows of Jen’s house–that sort of thing had happened before. But he seemed happy now, like he was going off for a week at doggie summer camp, so I was able to relax a bit and enjoy myself.

We got to the airport quickly and Tharelyn dropped us off and left. I had hoped she’d stick around in case my bag turned out to be too heavy and I needed to give her some of my excess items. But I got through check-in okay–the bag was just the right size.

This was to be my first-ever airline flight. I wasn’t worried so much about flying as I was about getting through Customs and checking in and making it to the right gate at the right time. But as soon as I got to the security line some fat woman handed me a yellow card that announced I’d been randomly chosen for a second, more thorough security check.

I was separated from my bags, shoes, and outerwear and herded into a glass cage, not unlike a veal-calf feeding pen. James and Nyssa, who’d already gone through security, were standing to one side laughing at me, upset only that they couldn’t take pictures of me in my helpless state. I figured this was what people felt like 300 years ago when they had their hands and feet locked in the stocks.

I resented the hell out of those guards searching my luggage, but they were civil and easy-going about it. I joked that my bag was so tightly-packed that if they opened it it would spring open like a jack-in-the-box, and they took me for my word. My pride ruffled, the guards sprang open the glass door and sent me on my way.

Any illusions I had about the glamour of flying were shattered the moment I stepped on our cramped, rattle-trap plane. Even First Class didn’t look all that impressive to me. What with the tight seating, the shaky movements, and the noise, it seemed to me to be nothing more than an over-priced Greyhound bus.

I had made sure to get aisle seats. (I’m short, but need my leg room.) My seat mate was a tall, lumpy guy who didn’t talk, and who spent his time either sleeping or working on a book of those Japanese number puzzles that are so popular these days. When the plane started up my immediate sensation was that some people were pushing up and down on the wing outside–then I saw we were actually moving. I got slightly alarmed for the few seconds it took for us to lift off, and began praying.

In my left trouser pocket was a rosary blessed by the Bishop of Austin. In the money belt hanging around my neck was an Agnus Dei blessed over half a century ago by Pope Pius XII. And in my right inside jacket pocket was an envelope of photos of Fred. I wasn't taking any chances.

I got really fascinated by everything that was going on and wanted to see everything happening outside, but as soon as we got off the ground my seat mate closed the shutter, so I had to watch everything through the windows across the aisle. Strangely enough, after we got to our normal flying altitude, the view outside became instantly rather commonplace. I felt like I was watching a rather dull movie, and indeed, a feeling of watching a movie, for good or ill, stayed with me for the rest of the trip.

But I think the biggest surprise I had about flying for the first time was how shady and unsteady the process is. I had just assumed that after a century they would've figured out how to make airplanes fly smoothly.

The flight was uneventful. I had a Coke, read the papers, studied my travel notes (I’d brought an inch-thick file of my most vital Paris print-outs), and looked with vague interest at the skyline of Tulsa as we passed over it. But I got very excited when the Pilot announced we were getting ready to land in Chicago.

James, in the seat behind me, intoned, “Bring your seats to the upright and locked position–we are preparing to make our final descent into madness.” I responded, “I’m way ahead of ya there, buddy!”

I was as giddy as a child when I finally could make out cars and trucks on the Chicago highways and see the skyline far off to the east. I thought of that old cop show, “Crime Story,” the opening credits of which included vintage 1950s/1960s footage of planes landing at O’Hare. When we landed safely I felt one more burden lifted: I’d survived the first of my four flights. James, I soon learned, was both surprised and disappointed I'd not had a major freak-out or panic attack during the flight.

I got off the plane and felt the sharp cold biting through the corridor that connected the plane to the terminal. When I walked into the terminal I was greeted by the serious, stony faces of men who looked a lot like police detectives. Who had tipped them off? Then I passed the line of people waiting on friends and family and the chauffeurs holding up signs bearing the names of the people they were to drive. For some reason, I felt rather important walking by this bunch.

J&N apparently waited for everyone else to get off before they got their things out of the overhead compartments, as they didn’t get into the terminal until several minutes after I did. When they spotted me and walked up I had a speech ready: “Welcome to Chicago, the home of Ferris Bueller, Jake and Elwood Blues, Al Capone, John Wayne Gacy, and Henry Darger! My kinda town!”

We walked a hell of a long way to the gate for the Paris flight. Naturally, I took note that while the Austin merely has barbeque and sandwich joints in its airport, O’Hare has a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. I was also tickled to have the chance to buy the “Chicago Tribune” and “Chicago Sun-Times”–the names in the obituaries had such a robust ethnic quality to them. Even the local news seemed interesting, which is never the case in any of the places I’ve ever lived ...

I noticed the travelers gathering around our gate were much better dressed than average Americans. This was definitely the Paris flight. When we boarded we were told the flight wasn’t even close to being full, so that after we attained our regular altitude we’d be free to get up and sprawl over two or three seats if we wished–a plus for anyone who wanted to sleep.

I was rather shocked by the angle and speed and force with which we took off–I was tempted to yell out, “Ramming speed!” It was already night by now, and North Chicago was a gorgeous golden netting of lights beneath us. As I stared with my mouth open, not expecting to be bothered for the next few minutes, someone annoyingly tapped first the top of my head and then my left arm. I was disoriented and looked all around, then James stuck his face around the side of my seat. This so startled and annoyed me I poked my finger out at him to caution him not to surprise me like that, and accidently poked him in the eye. And I’m damned if I know now what it was he wanted to tell me in the first place.

I moved up a few rows and took over two seats. I knew I wasn’t going to try to lay out over three seats. If I could sleep at all, it’d have to be in a seated position. I worked on my print-outs until they turned down the lights and began their programming, which started out with some CBS clips.

Somewhere over Canada I had to rid myself of some carry-on baggage, so to speak. I went into a tiny lavatory that was just as wide and half as long as the bathroom of an efficiency apartment I had in 1992. As I sat there I noticed a huge wall mirror to my left at shoulder level, and realized there are several bodily functions that cause one to make a face so silly and embarrassing one should never see it.

I tried to sleep during the first movie, but the monitors were too bright and the plane was making too damn much noise. (On both of our trans-Atlantic flights we had monitors hanging from the ceiling, not the more modern kind on the backs of each chair.) I tried to listen to music on the in-flight channels–oldies, classical, jazz–then noticed the programming repeated every 90 minutes or so. Clearly they counted on everyone getting to sleep.

One row up in a three-seat section was a French woman with a baby and a rambunctious three-year-old girl that a horse tranquilizer apparently could not take down. (It’s been long-established that everyone in the world has to just suck it up for the wants, needs, entitlements, and peccadilloes of young parents. Nobody else really matters.)

But it wasn’t the child making noise that scared off my last chance at sleep–it was the mother’s strong perfume, which was spread around by all the scurrying and bustling she was doing. (The BBC World Service recently did a report saying a study had found young mothers are not in fact ditzy airheads, but are actually at the peak of mental alertness and intelligence. As much as I respect the BBC, I call bullshit on that finding.)

We were somewhere over the North Sea and I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in two days, so I settled back and watched the Dennis Quaid/Topher Grace workplace comedy “In Good Company,” the language of which had apparently been censored by my Presbyterian Great-Grandmother.

I raised the shutter. Was I seeing icebergs? The tops of clouds? There was just a hint of light out there. This was the only way to start the day. I am by no means a morning person, but if you have to start the day in the morning, then by God do it flying into the sun!

Later on I got a weird feeling and raised the shutter again. We were over Ireland. I felt very peaceful and comfortable knowing that, for some reason, possibly because so many of my friends are Irish. I left the shutter up.

The stewardesses began stirring the passengers and rolling out the breakfast carts. I ate my breakfast with relish and excitement as I watched the clouds glow. The French mother woke her kids and tried to pick up the debris they’d spread all over the plane for the last eight-and-a- half hours. The Pilot announced we’d soon be in Paris, and the mother began singing to her kids a charming little children’s song about going to Paris. Even I, sleep-deprived that I was, found this charming.

No. 20: Name that company

2006-03-15T14:28:00.000-08:00

Hint: This company photo was taken in 1976.

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-02-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

One final post from J.S. Bankston before he boards for Paris.

___________________

--Sunday--2/26--
I leave for Paris tomorrow afternoon. Twenty-four hours from now I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic, ideally sawing logs. I am still packing, but wanted to dash a few thousand words off before I left.

I went with traveling companions James and Nyssa to get some last-minute items, including my second and third set of comfort insoles (the first one was a bust), and two extra pair of what I call my "purty black panties," black lycra shorts which James said should minimize chafing while I walk all over Paris. I wore a pair for the first time last week, and I don't believe I've ever had on a piece of clothing more uncomfortable and constricting in my life. I am a boxer-short man all the way. But if it helps me walk better....

We almost had a major trip snafu Friday. J&N have a very cluttered house (think "Grey Gardens"), but they try to set aside important items like passports, stick them in ziploc bags, and thumb-tack them onto their walls, seven or eight feet off the floor (think "Everything is Illuminated"). Well, Friday James discovered Nyssa’s passport was missing. There was no way in hell they could get a replacement by Monday. She rushed home from work in the middle of the day and they tore the house apart before finally finding the passport. It seems when they got back from their last trip last May (from the South of France), Nyssa just tossed her still-packed suitcase into a secret cubbyhole and never thought of it again, and that’s where the passport was.

Nyssa said had she not been able to go that James should still have gone. We all have discounted, non-transferable tickets, so there was no use forfeiting all that money for nothing on both tickets. James said that had it just been me and him going, he would’ve tossed his agenda and followed me around for a week, until I finally beat him to death in an attempt to finally get a little privacy.

J&N say I'll probably be alone about 50% of the time, though I expect it will be more than that, since our agendas, budgets, and traveling strategies differ so much.

J&N always like to sit in the very last row of a plane, even though the seats don't recline. James explained he did this because he goes to the bathroom once an hour on flights and doesn't like to have to step over people. But that doesn't explain the last row thing.

I know when we go to movies they always like to sit in the very last row and stick plugs in their ears against the supposed noise. but I'm uncomfortable back there. I like to go to the movies alone and sit in the third row or maybe the second, dead center, because my eyes and ears are bad, and I enjoy not having people in front of me--it makes me feel like I'm in a private screening room.

I think I hurt James's feelings a bit when I said I was less interested in sitting with him than I was in being comfortable on that long flight, so I arranged to get in the row ahead of him on the aisle, in a reclining seat.

James asked me if I was going to join the "Mile-High Club" during my first flight. I said since I’m not taking a date to Paris that would probably just have to involve a wank in the loo.

J&N got their plane and hotel deal together as part of a package. He kept warning me that every week I put off buying a ticket it would get more expensive, but as it turned out I got my tickets for about the same price as he paid. But I didn't want to pay what his hotel was charging me for a single. James suggested we talk one of our friends into coming over and sharing the room with me, but I didn't like that idea. I decided to find my own hotel.

J&N plan to stay in their hotel a lot. But I'm not paying tons of money to sit in a fucking room and stare at the walls--I want to see Paris! I just need a room to sleep , shave, shower, shit, and store my stuff in. That's it. I'd like to stay in a fancy hotel, but I really don't need to. This is one area where I am willing to cut costs.

I researched this matter for weeks and worked myself into a frenzy. I haven't been so indecisive since I was apartment hunting two years ago. J&N are staying in the Latin Quarter. It would be more convenient if I stayed near them, and there are lots of cool things in that are. But then I started pricing other hotels in other areas....

I narrowed it down to three hotels in the Latin Quarter--The Esmeralda, the Marignan, and the Hotel du Commerce--all of which were just a few blocks from J&N at the Hotel Abbatial St. Germain. I was also looking at a hostel, the "Young & Happy," about 15 minutes south of J&N. I figured that since I am neither young nor happy a week in that place would generate tons of stories. Plus, I want to meet people--Parisians, young travelers from all over the world.

James and I are both huge germaphobes, but our conditions manifest themselves in different ways. He hates spending money, but has stayed in enough bad hostels that he refuses to do it again, regardless of the savings they provide.

I had suggested we rent an apartment. The total for three of us would've been cheaper than it would've been at hotels. James said they normally do that if they stay more than a week, but that he'd already reserved their hotel rooms.

What was throwing me was reading the online reviews of these hotels and hostels from former guests. (This also slowed me up when I was apartment-hunting.) James said if a hotel got a bad review, it was no doubt written by a complaining sore-head. He was more likely to believe a bad review of a hostel, and added that if a positive hostel review contained no specific details, it was probably a puff piece written by the staff.

My first choice, though, was the Hotel Esmeralda, which was built in 1640. Some guests think it a filthy dump, while others regard it as romantic, like an artist's garret. It's about five minutes from the front door of Notre-Dame (some people use the chimes as their wake-up call), and a block from Shakespeare &Co. Chet Baker stayed there, as did Terrence Stamp and Sophia Loren, and Serge Gainsbourg nailed Jane Birkin there, so that's plenty hipster cred for me.

The problem is that "The Guardian" profiled this place some time back, so now it's gotten popular, and all the websites and guidebooks warned that you needed to book a room three to five months in advance. I didn't have that kind of time, but I was hoping the fact I was traveling in the off-season would help me, along with the fact the riots in Paris have been scaring off tourists.

So I finally decided to call. I haven't been so nervous about making a phone call since that disastrous time I asked that girl out to senior prom, 24 years ago. (This was only my second overseas call.) I tried the number, only to be told I couldn't bill it to my number. I needed a calling card, which I don't have. Eventually the operator connected me, and I forgot my lines: "Bon jour, monsieur. Parlez-vous Anglais?"

But I conveyed to the desk clerk that I wanted their cheapest single room (about $41 a night, with a sink in the room and the bathroom down the hall, but no view) for seven nights. He told me to fax him the request and my credit card number for security. I did that later in the day, and had the guy leave me a message on my answering machine as confirmation. (I think they have internet access in the lobby for guests, but the hotel doesn't have an e-mail address.)
I just hope I don’t freeze my ass off. The weather report for the next week forecasts colder weather than I’ve ever had to deal with down here in the tropics.

I've written down all the hours for all the sites and shops I want to visit, using the most up-to-date guidebooks. (I have about a dozen.)

But as I've been saying, it sounds like J&N and I aren't going to spend a lot of time together. One problem is that they apparently have an aversion to French food, based mainly on one bad experience in Paris a few years ago that didn't taste very good. James also refuses to eat any beef in Europe, out of fear of contracting Mad Cow Disease.

James regaled me with horror stories about rude waiters, and being forced to sit in the tourist sections of restaurants and order off the shitty, over-priced tourist menus. "You've never been intimidated until you've dealt with a French waiter." When I heard this I laughed and said, "First, the French have never pitted their national will against that of Bankston, and second, that's a moot point anyway, since the French and I are gonna get along great. Apart from their hairy-arm-pitted women and their aversion to bathing, I think the French and I are quite simpatico."

And if I don't eat out in the restaurants of Paris I see no reason to bother going. James says, "We just prefer to save our money for museum entrance fees. You know--cultural things." To which I replied in horror, "French food IS French culture! You can't know France without knowing the food!" So I will probably be eating alone.

Also, Nyssa apparently likes to sleep ten hours a night. James sleeps eight, retiring an hour after her and getting up an hour before. (Now at home I like to sleep as much as I can, often more than ten hours, but then again, I have no reason to be awake.) So I guess for her to get up at 7am, she'll have to retire at 9pm, which pretty much kills the idea of going anywhere at night. (I think she's willing to make an exception for the late hours on Wednesday at the Louvre.) and James says that the longer a trip goes on, the more tired they get and the later they sleep.

Generally, James gets up early and goes to the corner grocery store and buys food, they eat in their hotel and make sandwiches for lunch (or for lunch they'll either get paninis from a street vendor or eat at a fast-food place like McDonald's of the French chain "Flunch"). They go see one main site in the morning, then go back to the hotel at noon, go out to see a site in the afternoon, then go back to the hotel, and really don't do much in the evening other than look at what they acquired that day, and make plans for the next day.

This will not work for me. I plan to sleep no more than six hours a night, get up early and watch the sun rise over Paris, maybe take in a Mass at some cool old church. For the week I intend to make myself a regular at my neighborhood cafe, and have my coffee and crossaint, and read the paper and chat as best I can. I will probably get out and start shopping and sight-seeing a lot earlier than J&N--if nothing else, the churches open a lot earlier than the museums--and will likely meet them at the first big attraction of the day.

He does want to still go to the Buddha Bar for his birthday, but it sounds like the absinthe pub crawl is off. He wants to buy a bottle and drink it in his room. I said that pretty much kills any chance of my getting an article out of the absinthe quest, because drinking in the hotel room is boring to me.

So most of the nightlife end of this trip will also be done by me alone. I may or may not go to the Opera, but I will probably hit a few jazz or chanson clubs. There are at least three movie theatres in my neighborhood that specialize in showing old classic films, one of which used to be managed by Francois Truffaut, and another located just a block from my hotel. And there is to be a performance on Friday at St. Eustache Church of Mozart’s "Requiem." That’s be a great way to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday.

Transportation seems to be another problem. J&N like to walk everywhere, saying that if you take taxis or the Metro you often miss the shops and sites and photo ops you encounter when on foot. I said that is a good point, but if it comes down to it and I have to choose between walking and possibly seeing cool, obscure things and missing key sites, and taking cabs or the metro, missing the obscure things, and seeing the major ones, I'll go with the latter.

James wailed, "But every time you step into a cab it costs you $20!" I shrugged, "I'm used to that. Every time I get into a cab here it costs me $20, and that only takes me to fucking downtown Austin. At least a cab in Paris would take me to some place cool!"

God, I hope we don't fucking kill each other over there. James says that he and Nyssa have a rule, a blanket amnesty policy that extends from the Austin Airport on the way out to the Austin Airport on the way in. They know there will be set-backs, problems, tempers losts, ugly words, and so forth, but whatever happens in Europe stays in Europe. I said that sounds like an excellent policy, since I'm already so prone to be an asshole anyway.

I voiced my concerns to James one day as we ran errands. He said he was mostly pulling my chain, that he often vows that he'll spend his vacations taking it easy, but he never follows through. He also said his mother-in-law got onto him, telling him to stop playing up my fears and worries (like telling me there's a 100% chance I'll get diarrhea from the stress of traveling). But I don't know what to believe. I still think I'll be going it alone much of the time.

I had never been to a travel agent before this trip. I was waited on by a delightfully opinionated British woman in her 30s (much too old for me), and we had a great conversation about performance art, and some of the stranger artists around today, like Damien Hirst. She talked about going to a museum and seeing a piece of art (I think it involved feces flung against the wall) that caused her "to fall to the goddamn floor," though I am unsure if this was because she was laughing, or horrified, or made ill, or what. Her "mates" had to pick her up and help her outside.

My only quibble with her was that I stated firmly and categorically I did not want to pay more than 50 or 60 Euros a night for a hotel room, and would gladly take a hostel or a hotel with the bathroom down the hall, if that's what it took, yet she still kept mentioning places that were pricier. I said I wanted to save my money for shopping and the French food.

Afterwards, I told James that although she had been to Paris before and I hadn't, I got the distinct impression I knew more about Paris, it's layout, hotel, restaurants, etc., than she did. "But after all," I added, "I have no job. All I've been doing for weeks is reading Parisian guidebooks and studying maps."

She recommended pain au chocolat, a sort of chocolate-filled croissant, saying, "It's perfect for elevensies." James and I were giggling about this outside: "Elevensies?! I only thought hobbits ate elevensies!"

Anyway, I took the plunge and bought my plane tickets. I've never been on a plane before, and apparently this is such a long trip it'll earn me all kinds of frequent-flier miles.

James said he's found it fascinating to watch me prepare for the trip. He prepares for a trip hardly at all, his wife and mother-in-law prepare somewhat more, but he's never seen anyone prepare on the scale that I have. He says I seem to be researching not only the places I want to see, but all places, so I can know what I don't need to see on this trip. I said I just want to get it right, and leave a lot of room for spontaneity, but that I didn't want to be like the school-marmish, kill-joy travel guru Rick Steves (who someone on a message board once brilliantly said is so dull and white bread he makes Ned Flanders seem like Scott Wieland). Steves is the kind of guy who has a rigorous schedule, yet advises travelers to "Set aside a couple hours every day in your schedule for spontaneous fun."

If my plane is shot down out of the sky by the "tare-ists," think of me now and then and send a few bucks to a Basset Hound rescue organization.

Bonsoir.

Tales From a Great Indoorsman

2006-02-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

This is not fiction. J.S. Bankston is headed to Paris.

----------------

Contes d'un Grand Homme de l'Interieur
The other day I was awakened in the wee hours of the morning by my dog Fred, who was standing over me, staring anxiously down, cheeks puffing in and out, preparing to vomit. I tried to sit up and at least get out of the way, but his toenails were stuck in my T-shirt, and every time I tried to sit up I was pulled back down.

Finally I extricated myself, and lowered him down to the floor. He was in a delicated state for the rest of that day.

He was genuinely sick that day, but for the last few weeks he's been acting oddly. He's been brooding. He's been annoyed. He knows that something's up.

At the end of this month, I, who seldom leave my apartment if I can help it, who even puts off checking his mailbox most days, am stepping outside, getting into an airplane for the first time in my 42 years, and am spending a week in Paris, from February 28th to March 7th. See, I'm not a hermit and a recluse after all--not really. I just have to have a really good reason to go anywhere.

My friend James recently sold one of his domain names for a tidy amount, so he wants to celebrate his birthday in the City of Lights. I am about to run out of the savings I've been living off of for the past year, and I would hate to think that I spent all that money only within a half-mile of my front door. If I have to go back to being broke and working more dead-end, spirit-crushing jobs that have nothing to do with my writing skills, then by God I at least want to have some memories of the Good Times. So a trip to Paris seems the thing to do.

But I took a great deal of convincing. My mom, for instance, will shit a Miada if she ever learns about this trip, so I've somehow got to keep it a secret from her. A friend told me that taking this trip was a bad idea, at least until I get a few job-related business trips out of the way first. But everyone else I know has encouraged me to go.

A few of my former students went to study abroad last August, and one is still over there. He's based out of Barcelona, but he's also been to Madrid, Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, and Paris. His e-mailed accounts of his travels really whetted my appetite.

And then of course there's my former Citysearch copyeditor, Seth Sherwood, who's a big shot travel writer for the Washington Post and New York Times now. He's based out of Paris and I envy the shit out of his lifestyle.

James and his wife Nyssa go to Europe every summer for about a month. Her parents usually rent a house or an apartment over there. They did the south of France last year, Venice the year before that, and Paris in 2003. When J&N arrived at the airport, her parents, Howard and Tharelyn, who had arrived a week before to set the house up and establish a beach-head, greeted them by saying, "Bankston would love it here. We'd never be able to drag him away." I do not doubt it.

(Now James is trying to talk me into going with them to Rome in May. They've already bought their tickets, and the rental apartment, located by Santa Maria Maggiore, reportedly has a terrace. I said if I did go to Rome--I don't know how in hell I could afford to do that too--I would stay with them about a week, at least long enough to attend a Wednesday Papal audience, then take off on my own across Europe, at very least hit Paris, see my Dutch friend Tobias in Amsterdam, then fly out of London. But I'm not holding my breath that I can do that. And I guess Venice, Vienna, and Berlin will have to wait for another time.)

Of course my chief worry is Fred. He's 14 and we've spent less than 14 nights apart in the 10 years we've lived together. We are deeply, co-dependently attached to one another. He has a fit when I'm away for more than eight hours at a stretch. He began pissing the rugs in annoyance in 2004 when I had a part-time job.

I have tortured myself imagining how Fred will take my being away for a week, afraid he'll forget me, or feel so depressed he'll give up his will to live. But everyone has assured me it'll be okay, that he'll handle it well. I was going to leave Fred with my vet friend Tree, but she's not always home. Fortunately my friend Jennifer works from home, and has two Border Collies she keeps inside and walks and plays with frequently, and she's willing to take care of Fred. I am sure he'll enjoy getting to play with some other dogs for a change--I just hope all goes well during the week.

Of course the reunion on the night of the 7th should be something to behold. It'll be like the slow-motion ending of a "Lassie" movie.

Yes, I am 42 years of age and have never been in an airplane. Many people assume that this is because I'm afraid to fly, but actually, it's because I've never had the opportunity. When you're a kid you travel where your parents go, and my parents weren't big on traveling and my mom was afraid of flying. And after I left home I never had enough money to go anywhere.

I am not so much worried about the fact I'm a citizen of the most hated nation on earth, a nation that's too worried about being politically correct and not offending anybody that it won't do searches of suspicious-looking people at airports. Nor am I worried I will be hurtling thousands of miles above the ground in a highly-flammable tin can. No, the things I'm sweating over are the long-ass flight, in tight seats, and getting to the right place in the airport at the right time. I'm very worried about dealing with baggage carousels and losing my luggage. I plan to take one carry-on on the way over, though I expect I'll have to buy another bag over there for my purchases.

So on Monday, February 27, I'll drop off Fred, leave Austin at 1:41pm, arrive at O'Hare at 4:16, leave there at 6:05, and arrive at Charles DeGaulle on Tuesday the 28th at 9:20am. I'll probably take the Metro into Paris, find my hotel or hostel, shower, then go out to greet the city. I'll leave Paris on Monday, March 7th at 2:25pm, arrive at O'Hare at 4:50, and will ideally get through Customs in time to catch my 6:32pm flight which lands in Austin at 9:20pm, soon after which I will re-united with Fred.

We will have exactly seven days. J&N did most of the touristy things the last time they were in Paris, but they want to take it easier this time, even though there are places they want to revisit. James is saving his money for over-priced drinks at the Buddha Bar and other hip joints. He also wants to seek out some absinthe. I might write an article about the latter and try to shop it around.

James says his big thing to see in Europe is churches, and they usually devote the rest of their time to historical museums and art museums at a 50/50 split. James says I would dig the catacombs tour, but strangely enough, I would rather check out the Virgin Megastore on the Champs-Elysees. James is not a big cemetery-goer, but I intend to go see the ones in Montmartre (Truffaut's there, along with Nijinsky and Careme) and Montparnasse (Baudelaire, Sartre, Beckett, Cioran, Cortazar, Duras, de Maupassant, Henri Langlois, and Serge Gainsbourg are there), then Pere-Lachaise if there's time (to see Balzac, Proust, Oscar Wilde, and the Lizard King).

James has no interest in the Pantheon, even though that's right by where we're staying, but I'll have to go in and pay my respects to Zola, Hugo, and Dumas pere. (Okay, I just got off the phone with James and he's willing to see Pere-Lachaise. He was a little surprised I have an agenda for the cemeteries. He just thought I'd walk in and look around, whereas I actually want to look specific people up, maybe put flowers on their graves, and so forth.)

Okay, here is my Paris travel agenda:
--Tuesday--February 28th--
Arrive, go through Customs, take the Metro into town, check into my hotel, shower, then hit Notre-Dame, St. Chappelle (noted for its walls of stained glass), Shakespeare & Company bookstore, St. Julien-le-Pauvre, maybe the Pantheon, and a few other sites in the Latin Quarter, then get to bed fairly early. (We're going to be based in the Latin Quarter, but in separate hotels.) There's a concert commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Michael Haydn, brother of Franz Joseph, at Notre-Dame at 8:30pm, but I don't know if we'll make it.

--Wednesday--March 1st--
Get up early, go to the Ash Wednesday Mass at Notre-Dame, then spend the day at the Louvre, since it's open until 9:45pm on Wednesdays.

--Thursday--March 2nd--
We are unlikely to get to all the things on today's agenda, but I have so much wiggle room during the other days I should be able to see all these things sooner or later. We'll go to St. Sulpice Church and (more importantly for me) the religious antique stores nearby, the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal, walk past the Graceland of France, the graffiti-covered home of Serge Gainsbourg, then go to Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides and maybe the War Museum there, the Eiffel Tower, the Musee de Homme at the Palais de Chaillot, and maybe the Balzac house museum (where I should be offered a job as a tour guide because of my resemblance to the great author).

--Friday--March 3rd--
I expect we'll start at the Musee d'Orsay to see the Impressionists, then go to the Arc d'Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees, maybe tour La Madeleine Church and the old Garnier Opera (where the Phantom hangs out), stroll through the Place Vendome, then cut through Beauberg and the Marais neighborhoods, before winding up at the Canal St. Martin. We'll probably have dinner up there.

--Saturday--March 4th--
We'll hit Eglise St. Augustin, stroll around Montmartre, tour Sacre Coeur Church, the Montmartre Cemetery, check out the Erik Satie apartment museum (one room--reportedly the smallest museum on earth, so that shouldn't take long to see), and rue Caulaincourt (where a lot of the action in "The 400 Blows" takes place), then maybe take in the Art and Crafts Museum, which has lots of models and gadgets showing how things work. Since J&N don't like modern art, I may spend the afternoon alone, checking out the Musee Picasso and the Pompidou Centre.

--Sunday--March 5th--
I'll try to find a church with a really great musical program for the morning. After that I want to go to Montparnasse Cemetery. James wants me to go to the Catacombs. Then we'll go to the grand Mosque for some mint tea in the garden. I may also go for a sauna and massage there, since the "hammam" is open to men that day. And anyway, after all that damn walking I will certainly be sore, so I can think of no better cure than to let a Middle Easterner in a pair of Joe Namath slingshot briefs have his way with me for three or four hours.

--Monday--March 6th--
J&N are not big cemetery people, but are willing to go with me to Pere-Lachaise. After that I may hit the Jardin Des Plantes, the zoo, and the Natural History Museum. This should be my big mop-up day, where I'll try to catch up on anything I missed. I have a feeling I'll be getting a lot of taxis this day. At night we're going on one of those cruises of the Seine, which are admittedly touristy, but also beautiful.

And of course there's the nightlife. James wants to celebrate his birthday at the Buddha Bar. I'd like to hit some jazz and/or chanson clubs. Our first night in town is the last night for a Robert Wilson production of "Madame Butterfly" at the Bastille Opera, and "Rigoletto" is playing there most of the rest of the week. There's several restaurants I want to try, including one of the famous literary cafes--most likely the Deux Magots--and such country French eateries as Chez Denise and Chez Robert et Louise.

I'd also like to go to a movie, ideally at the legendary Cinematheque Francaise, although it's recently moved from its old home in the Pallais de Chaillot to a Frank Gehry building over in the east part of town. And my old Citysearch copywriter, Seth Sherwood will be busy writing (just coming back from the Middle East and on his way to the US), but he promises we'll have a big night out.

And let's not forget the shopping. We all want to go by the Muji stationery store, as well as the trippy Deyrolle taxidermy shop.

I've never been to a Virgin Megastore, so I want to go to the one on the Champs-Elysees, and I'd like to check out one of the huge old department stores (La Samaritaine is closed indefinitely for repairs), and the old "passages" that Walter Benjamin found so fascinating, that were the forerunners to today's malls. And of course there are the bookstores: Shakespeare and Company, Le Hune, Gibert Jeune, the Red Wheelbarrow, 7L (Karl Lagerfeld's place), and the WH Smith by the Louvre.

(In the next installment, I settle on a hotel, planning, technique, and scheduling problems emerge, and delightful discoveries are made.)

No. 19: Name that celebrity

2006-02-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

submitted by tj1972

"I Saw" No. 114

2006-01-28T18:54:00.000-08:00

The following took place at Rick's (home of the Tuesday half-price burgers) at 6:42pm.

A petite woman, face draped by a hoodie, walks into the open-style, small tavern, alone, wearing sneakers, jeans, and a snug, hip-length white shirt. She heads straight back to the restroom as three female bartenders gather and whisper. Hoodie woman then types into a Sidekick as she stops before going into the restroom. Minutes later, she comes out, head down, and leaves.

Half the bar thought the staff was talking about some person who just came in to use the restroom without asking. The other half knows it was Paris Hilton.

Three covers I heard and thought, "I like that"

2006-01-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

"Thunder Road" (Bruce Springsteen) - Tortoise and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy off The Brave and The Bold (always loved the line 'You ain't a beauty/But, hey, you're alright/Oh, and that's alright with me')

"The Best of All Possible Worlds" (Kris Kristofferson) - Eddie Spaghetti off The Sauce

"Ride Me Down Easy" (Billy Joe Shaver) - Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis off Compadre

__________

**Bonus Non-Cover

"Waco Moon" - Todd Snider

This song appears on same album as "Ride Me Down Easy." Billy Joe Shaver's longtime guitarist, Eddy, was also his son. Eddy overdosed on New Year's Eve 2000. This song's about him, the overdose, and it ends with a few poignant lines from Shaver's "I'm Just An Old Lump Of Coal (But I'm Gonna Be A Diamond Someday)."