Why I Hate Added Value & Other Unrelated Items

Topics to be covered, in no particular order:

• window licking
• "Value" Villages
• my life
  

Since I don't blog, this is old outrage. But the rant still stands:
As a cultural eye-opener, the members of the PIP were invited to take the RER A out to Marne-la-Vallee to hit up "Le Vallee Village", an outdoor outlet mall (like Wrentham) that, unlike Wrentham, specializes in high fashion. While my mouth did water as I ran my hands over crepe Givenchy gowns, Christian Lacroix sheath dresses, and a Jimmy Choo pump that caused me to make a sound usually reserved for people's new babies, my brain got a little angry.

These represent a small portion of the "leftover" pret-a-porter collections designers are left with every season. Some designers put them in haute outlet areas like VV, but some don't want to "tarnish their brand" by suggesting that they a) don't sell every last piece because they're so desirable and b) would stoop to the level of a plebian outlet mall to sell the remaining last-season pieces. That in itself is a little irritating, but that's added value.

What made me livid and nearly sick is that Hermes, the Hermes of the 250-euro scarves, takes the unbought scarves at the end of each season and BURNS THEM. I can't even begin to explain how wrong this is in a world (in a city) where people can't even afford to eat, or house or clothe themselves. 250 EUROS PER PIECE AND YOU BURN THEM. As an ad student, I understand that brand identity is important, and that Hermes place in the haute couture world is legendary, but as a human, I just cannot comprehend that.

Don't burn your scarves or I shall begin mispronouncing your name on purpose so that it sounds like the Greek god with wings on his ankles, Hermes!

Okay angry time over.
Cultural facts about France time begins now.
In French, there is an idiomatic phrase for window shopping called "leche vitrines", which literally means "window licking". Other than the fact that this is hilarious, it is also not far from the truth.
The French LOVE to window-lick (NOT literally. Please don't get the wrong idea, come to Paris and lick the window of Chanel because you want to fit in culturally). The window-licking is made simpler, because you can actually what the likelihood (I just typed licklihood, no joke) of you being able to actually lick whatever it is you're looking at, because they list the prices of the items on little cards below the looks. This is how, every morning, as I pass by Manoukian and gaze longingly at the salmon pink satin blend halter dress that flares out at the waist, I know it can never be mine because that rude sign telling me it is out of my price range gazes right back at me.
Also, the window-licking can happen at any moment. Window-licking is not something you write in your agenda. You do it on the way to work in the morning, leisurely stopping to check the price on those striped peep-toes. You do it waiting for the bus, stopped cold in awe of the structured bags at Lancel. You definitely do it on the way home from work, stopping the thousands of others walking back home from continuing to walk, instead forcing them to also stare at whatever's captured your attention. As I walked with my boss back from a jewelry shoot, he frequently stopped to check out the looks in the windows, pausing with the same lazy consideration someone gives their produce at the supermarket. Window-licking is French and I love it.

Now that the travel is winding down, I think I'm going to start a new blog. This one will be more about focusing my writing style on advertising/culture-related snark and less on the minutiae of my life, which will be reserved for this blog and therefore rarely written about. We'll see!

Key Lime Delights

Spring break was a delight. It was so, so, sosososo nice to see Caitlin and my grandparents. It was very low-key just watching movies, hanging out, wanting to die because Caitlin beats me so badly at Phase 10. We went kayaking and poked men-o-war with coral, which was educational. We went wakeboarding, which was SUPER fun. For some reason I am better at wakeboarding than waterskiing...mystery of life. We also finally went to bingo with the g-rents, which I've been wanting to do for several years now. Neither Cait nor I won, but my grandma won twice and I was dannnngerously close to the major $350 jackpot (only two numbers...sigh). My last day, my cousin, her boyfriend, and my aunt and uncle came down for their break week. It was great to see them, even only for a day. My last day was spent watching Big Fish and a REALLY crappy Lifetime movie starring the dad from Boy Meets World and his heinous so-much-more-than-a mullet.

Unfortunately, all this family cooking (grandma regularly attempted to feed me to the point of explosion), strawberry consumption, law&order watching and paradise living made me reaaaaaally homesick. I think it's a combination of the long flights, lack of sleep, nervousness about starting my internship, and real live homesickness. Studying abroad for a year is an emotional undertaking, especially when first semester involved SO MUCH NEW.

Internship starts tomorrow. Adventure!

I <3 Parallel Syntax

Alright, single-digit number of people who still read this, Michelle's Amsterdam entry has convinced me to write my own, despite the fact that I went there weeks ago and just figured "too late to write about it." Now's the time.

First off, yes. Amsterdam is a land where the smell of pot is ubiquitous and you can sing updated old children's songs like "How Much Is That Hooker in the Window?" (I didn't. I'm not THAT culturally stunted. I did make the joke though.) It is also an incredibly beautiful city, full of winding canals with houseboats and dinghies perched placidly on top of the water, cobblestones streets full of fashionable bikers on old-fashioned bikes, and tiny, glued-together apartments that, like Venice, are slowly sinking into the adjacent canals. The Heineken flows like Guinness through the veins of an Irishman, the Pannekoeken (pancakes, more similar to thick crepes topped with deliciousness) take up large plates with their fluffy, ham-and-pineapple-and-cheesy goodness, and the people are all wonderfully kind AND, bonus, speak wonderful English.

Besides getting terrifically lost on the way to our hostel because Kelley, Holder of the Map, confused Kerkstraat with Kreizengracht and we walked half an hour out of the way and around 25% of Amsterdam before realizing that we may not be in the right place when the number of our hostel was occupied by a Dutch Man, Esq., it was smooth sailing throughout. Like the good little tourists we were, we went to the Heineken brewery, which was delicious ice-cold free beer amidst the usual tourist trappery. Some highlights included a "Brew You" "ride" where you got to "be the beer" (and I got to use far too many quotes just then), a wild Heineken rave room where the walls displayed golden bubbling beer and the ceiling was made out of Heineken bottle bottoms, and a room with little TV pods where you could watch all the Heineken TV spots from the 60s onward.

The next day we went to the Anne Frank Huis, which, for me, was a really moving experience. I am really into World War II-era everything, and after having seen what I've seen on SAS, I think I'm more finely tuned to the exact depth of human cruelty. We went through the whole house, and all I could think about was how people were forced to hide here, not making any sound, never going outside, because some other person said they weren't as good as the rest of the population. What never ceases to render me speechless is that I am/was stepping where they stepped. I walked through a field in which millions of Cambodians walked before they were senselessly shot by the Khmer Rouge. I walked down a dirt path under which lay the remains of thousands whose clothes and teeth still rise up to the surface after heavy rains. I walked through a room where Anne Frank wrote in her diary. I walked through a house whose inhabitants nearly all died because of their faith and their heritage. Point is, the more things like this I see, the less I even come close to understanding the human brain, to understanding humans in general. The added videography was also really powerful--the interview with Anne's father in particular. Anne died just a month before Auschwitz was liberated, and many attribute it to the fact that she assumed she had nothing else to live for, that the rest of her family had died along with her sister. But her father lived, and it was her father who got her diary published.

On a lighter note (sort of), we also took a walk through the red light district. It is really weird to see mostly naked women standing in red, blacklit rooms, primping and pimping. At the Pancake Bakery, our dinner choice, we walked upstairs to use the WC into a rabbi and his youth group leading a discussion about whether legal prostitution was a good idea or not. Of course we listened in as we waited our turn for the bathroom. Then we walked around some more. We decided our code word for "I want to take a picture" was "pancake". I don't know why we didn't just use "I want to take a picture", but...nevermind. I know. Code words are more fun!

We DIDN'T go to the Van Gogh Museum because it was 15 euro, and there's already a good Van Gogh collection at the Musee D'Orsay, which is gratuit pour les etudiants d'histoire de l'art, so we didn't feel too bad about saving ourselves some money.

After a weekend of pannekoeken, "pancake", prostitutes (just in the windows and just for the sake of alliteration, please!), and promenading, we took our lovely train ride back to Paris. In summary, Amsterdam is gorgeous and definitely worth a weekend visit if you've got the ways and means.

I have not been good about this here blog. A few updates:

I whacked my crotchal region really, really hard on one of the stupidstupidstupid (I HATE THEM) stupid poles that Paris decided to put on the edges of sidewalks. I regularly forget they are there. I do not regularly bruise my no-fly zone. It hurt so bad I almost passed out and had to drink some water before I walked it off.

I am going to Bonnaroo in June. This is awesome.

I'm going to see Cyrano de Bergerac at the Comedie Francaise tomorrow. It should be awesome and tons o' fun, especially because, other than me adoring theatre, I get to dress up--something else you all know I adore.

Today was my favorite day in Paris thusfar. I slept in and then joined les filles for what turned into a 6-hour walkabout in a very large multi-arrondissal circle. We met up at 2 near Saint-Sulpice, where we began our extravaganza. It was over 50 today (it felt like 60), and at a few points I even took off my jacket and went sleeveless. The sun was finally shining and everyone was out and about enjoying it before it turns rainy again, as it inevitably shall (either tomorrow or Wednesday depending on which meteo you believe). We walked through le Jardin de Luxembourg, found a GLORIOUS fountain at which many beautiful pictures were taken, then walked around until we found a Monoprix. We bought fresh chevre, wonderfully ripe strawberries, and some chorizo, then hit up a boulangerie for delicious baguettes. We took our repas to one of the many ponts, really close to Ile-de-la-Cite, and ate an AMAZING meal. We then decided it was Berthillon time. Berthillon is a legendary Paris gelato/ice cream place on the Ile-St.-Louis. Their glaces are served all around Paris, but there's nothing like the real thing from the real maison. After the most delicious combo of dark chocolate and honey nougat delight in my mouth, we just sat by the seine, notre dame in front and some other awesome Seine-adjacent building at our back, taking secret pictures of cute French couples and admiring our incredible lives. After that, we went our separate ways, but Lindsey and I met up w/ Kate, who was wandering le Marais, for our favorite gyros in the Latin Quarter, where we stayed for about 3 hours just talking and taking up table space. It was the most wonderful day.

Okay I promise I'll try and back-update. I have been reading through my old livejournal over the last few days, and while it still instills me with the same "god i embarrass myself" feeling that reading over old journals does, it has a more literary, essaic quality that I really hope to recapture in future bloggage. I think I've gotten less intelligent since that time (perhaps just less pretentious), and I'm going to try to do more to fix that, like better blogging, more conscientious french pursuits, and less random internet-surfing. Baby steps.

I Used the Phrase "Pen-Blogging" Today

I gotta get better at this thing. I spend a lot of time procrastinating on the computer, and not enough of it procrastinating through the holy portal of Blogger.

But first, breaking news from the Travel Corner: Buying train tickets on four separate computers from four separate locations at four (well three, but let's rock this parallel syntax all the way through) separate prices four days before you leave for Amsterdam is an adventure in computering worthy of a Michael Crichton (or Steve Jobs) novel.

It began simply enough- a Skype conference re: trains to Amsterdam. I'd done my research like the good little globe-trotter I am, and had two trains in mind for the high-but-that's-Europe-for-you price of E130. Unfortunately, I hadn't banked on others of my generation being less computer savvy than I (or hadn't realized the level of my savv), and we hit roadblock 1.
ROADBLOCK 1: Some people can't even get on the SNCF website.
It wasn't long before, after some computorial cajoling, we merrily rolled along to roadblock 2.
ROADBLOCK 2: Train tickets are more expensive when you buy them in groups of 4. Not wanting to pay E190 for less than 48h in the 'Dam, we decided to hit it up single-style. Which brings us to...
ROADBLOCK 3: Getting single tickets makes OtherLindsey run into trouble. While we found tickets at the same times, Lindsey's were more expensive, then nonexistent, then redirected her to another website entirely. By the time I helped her out, my tickets had then gone all sorts of awry as well. In the meantime...
ROADBLOCK 4: K & L^3 had already bought their tickets for a train that was now sold out, sans We Two Linds(e/a)ys. LindsEy now could only find extra expensive tickets that matched mine (somehow, the exact same itinerary cost her E34 more), so decided to head out an hour later than our non-similarly-named counterparts.
Amidst all the ROADBLOCKS, our frantic Skype conferencing, our wading through SNCF websites, our bemoaning the state of the economy, me calling LindsEy to walk her through the process, and wondering why the 4 wasn't running today, IT WAS BEDLAM.

Seriously. If I could capture the essence of that harried 45 minutes of hostel-searching, hostel-booking, train-searching, freak-outing, train-booking, computer-crashing in a scent, it would probably be called "IYHSNC(wt)F? eau de quoilette", because even the name is confusing.

Beyond that long histoire that was actually a rather short chunk of time, I am happy to report that Paris is really starting to feel like home, to the point where I am already not wanting to go back and wanting to go on another study abroad program. If only my school were free and I could just go there for like 6 more semesters, I would do all of the study abroad programs, graduate when I'm 24, and be the coolest person ever.

Sometimes I just get this feeling where it's like all of my internal emotions and external surrounding coalesce into this wonderful sense of well-being. Today, it was going up the Metro escalator, carrying bags from Monoprix that were blistering my hands and threatening to bust open, listening to Jeff Buckley singing Dream Brother, staring up at the dusky, starry blue sky backing L'Eglise Trinite d'Estienne d'Orves, and knowing that I was going to walk back to my apartment, throw my stuff in my room, put away my groceries, and have dinner with my famille d'acceuil that just made me feel completely content.

Even though it's easy to slip back into English here, spending the evenings with my French family really does give me a better idea of how I'm progressing French-wise. Even though my conjugation still is patchy at best, and I'm still working off those "top 20" sorts of verbs for the most part, and I still am always looking for le mot juste, we actually have conversations at dinner. The first week or so, it was mostly the Leonards talking, with me interjecting the occasional "Ben, ouais," or "Ah bon?", but tonight we actually talked about stuff. Usually the night ends up in some sort of debatery, whether it is abortion and the death penalty (yeah, that's dinner conversation here), or the Nazis and really good movies about them (tonight's topic of discussion).

I have also discovered that French people (or at least the entire Leonard clan) do not like not knowing things. At an average American dinner, if somebody forgot what Woody Allen movie they were watching last Wednesday, the forgetter and the guests would say "laisse tomber", and then the forgetter would eventually remember or find out, possibly days later. If you forgot who directed the Pianist, you would just forget about it and move on to other topics. Here? No sir. Here, if you forget, you go to your computer and look it up (Manhattan Murder Mystery), thereby sparking a debate about the Internet v. The Quark or The Quail or The Qu-something-I-Forget-The-Name-of-That-is-Essentially-a-Fancy-French-IMDB-cum-Almanac (see? If I were truly French I would look it up right now, but I'm going to finish writing). Or, in our case tonight, you go on your laptop and IMDB The Pianist while your QP calls his brother in Normandy to check and see if he knows (he did, QP was right, it was Roman Polanski). Also, I looked it up and it's the Quid (le kweed).

So there's a lot more to say, but this is already quite a long and intimidating read full of hyphenation, so I will leave you with these two Things France Has That the US Doesn't or The Joys of Monoprix: Blood Orange Diet Coke (delectable), and vaguely-marshmallowy-substance-filled sourpatchesque candies called Fili-Tubs that are totally my new Twerpz substitute.

PS- In the category of Things France Doesn't Have That the US Shouldn't is lots of irritating Valentine's Day paraphernalia. In fact, there is NOTHING here that is pink or red or hearty or flowery for any reason other than that is it's natural color, or it is a heart or flower. There are not even any bare-bottomed babies holding medieval weaponry. Frankly, it is refreshing and delightful. Kind of like Blood Orange Diet Coke.