Wine cures all ills, except cirrosis of the liver

Well, considering that I had kept myself awake until 6am rather than the much earlier night I had intended, I was a bit of a wreck today. I slept in, then eventually got up and finished washing the last few dishes that were kicking around. I stared at the spotty floor of my kitchen and bathroom and promised myself that I would clean it very, very soon—but not right now.

I treated myself to a few episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy (thanks to the help WatchSimpsonsOnline and GizzoD!, respectively), scavenged some more leftovers, and set about finishing my blogging of Friday’s events and some of Saturday.

I had a whole bottle of rosé wine in the fridge, which I opened up to drink with dinner. As I watched the news of Colin Powell endorsing Obama repeat over and over on the Anglophone news networks, I drank my way through the entire bottle and fell soundly asleep.

Dishes, Cafés and Clubs

After a very long day and an even longer night (augmented with wine and pisco), I woke up rather late today and felt groggy. I slept in, watched a bit of TV, surfed the net, and then finally took a serious look at the pile of dishes and leftovers in my fridge. I made a dent in the mango salsa and the ceviche, and then got to the work of cleaning dishes and relegating leftovers to various containers. I realized that I had forgotten to put out my “simple” salsa last night, so I had about 1L of salsa that I needed to eat in the coming days. That isn’t so much of a problem, except that bags of tortilla chips here run about 2.50€ per bag. Seriously. I think I’ll just use crackers or maybe potato chips.

Anyway, that was that. I spent most of the evening taking care of these domestic issues and then making a first attempt at blogging last night’s events. Most of my crew from last night was going to meet at Le Léopard Café and then maybe move onto the Rex club to see Mathias Tanzmann. I was feeling a bit too tired to go out clubbing (boy, was I wrong), but at least I could go to the café and catch up with everyone. Also, a friend that I had made in Berlin was possibly going to join us, so I was motivated to go out at least a little bit.

Le Léopard

I hopped on a Vélib bike and made my way down to the Léopard café (this time without getting lost) and grabbed a pint. I was the only one there when I arrived, but after a few minutes the rest of the crew started materializing. We chatted about last night’s debauchery (“That pisco kicked my ass!”) and Fantômette’s sterling set (“She kicked my ass!”) and our sorry state this morning (“Ow, my ass!”).

A couple of pints later, Fantô and her girlfriend asked me if I was following them to the Rex. Feeling a bit sluggish, I said, “Meh, I dunno. I’m kinda tired and I spent so much money on last night’s food, I don’t think I can pay 14€ to in turn buy 10€ drinks.” Immediately, a handful of my friends piped up, offering their place on one of the guestlists or inviting me to be their “plus one.” (In the world of guestlists, you’re usually added as “Luis +1,” which means you’re can bring a companion.) Aww, shucks.

Well, I couldn’t turn down that sort of offer, especially considering that my friend from Berlin still hadn’t caught up with us. I wasn’t sure that she would make it to the Rex, but maybe…

Mathias Tanzmann @ Le Rex

We got to Le Rex pretty early, since our guestlist entries were all going to expire around 1h30. We arrived at 1h00, thinking that we were in good shape, but emerged from the subway station to find a massive, massive guest line. In fact, it was longer than the cash line. We all quietly cursed as we realized that there was a good chance of us being kept in line until the expiration of our guest list spots.

We got in line—me, Fantô, her girlfriend and an Australian couple we were hosting—and grumbled and debated whether we would pay full price to get in. I certainly wouldn’t.

A few minutes later, Fantô saw some people she knew a bit further up in line, so wandered over, said hello, and tried to seamlessly merge into the line. We still had a ways to go to get into the club, but we had probably shaved 15 minutes off of our wait. As we waited, a girl near the front of the line leaned over the stanchion and vomited on the pavement. Good luck getting into the club now, sister. Eww, you had spaghetti for dinner. Ugh, now everything smells like bile.

Then, a miracle. Fantô’s girlfriend pointed out a figure exiting from the doors of the Rex’s offices. It was Molly, one of the two DJs I had hung out with on the Rex’s float at the Techno Parade about a month ago. She’s also the person in charge of bookings at the club, so if there was anyone who could help us out, it would be her.

I called her name and she came over to exchange kisses with me. Thankfully, I didn’t even have to ask her for anything; she immediately said, “How many of you are there? Five? OK, one second.” She said a few words to the bouncer at the front, and the five of us were waved through (walking gingerly around that girl’s vomit). The doorperson (a.k.a. Mr. Peevish Listmaster) seemed to recognize me, shook my hand and asked me how I was doing, and then waved all five of us past the ticket booth without even asking who’s list we were on. This was quite different from the welcome I got the first few times I went to Le Rex back in 2006-07.

As lovely as it was to get ushered past the line, the really nice moment of the night came just a few seconds later. As we passed the ticket booth and started to head down the stairs, I got a call from my Franco-Berliner friend; she had caught up with us, and she was standing in from of the club. The lineup was still huge outside, so she was hoping I might be able to get her in. I walked back up the stairs and saw that the doorman had disappeared somewhere. I approached the bouncer and mustered something that I hoped was a mixture of friendly and respectful French:

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to bother you. I have a friend who just arrived as we were going inside and I was wondering if she could come in with us. It’s not a question of guestlists or anything—she’ll pay full price at the booth—but I feel bad leaving her to wait in line while we’re inside.” I was ready to keep on talking, but he simply said, “Where is she?” I pointed her out, and he waved her in without comment. We thanked him profusely and headed in.

I suppose that I partially benefited from having traded kisses with a Rex employee just a few minutes before right in front of him, but the bouncer certainly didn’t have to say yes to me. He could’ve said that she needed to wait in line with everyone else and nobody would’ve faulted him for it.

Anyway, it seemed like the fates were determined for me to have a night out, despite my own fatigue.

The night itself was actually pretty uneventful after that (but not at all unpleasant). The opening DJ was D’Julz, whose selection was sounded more like a DJ set from the mid-90s than anything recent. It sounded too much like the sort of progressive house I was studiously avoiding in 1999.

Mathias Tanzmann came on at around 3h00 and put on a rather mixed set. The first 30 minutes of his set I found really disappointing: thumpy hard-house and noisy trance that made me think I was watching DJ Tiësto or Paul Oakenfold rather than a minimal techno DJ from Berlin. Things took a turn for the better for the next hour, though, as he shifted to a heavy-handed “minimal” techno sound. The set was still, overall, more coarse and noisy than I would’ve liked, but I definitely enjoyed myself.

The last half hour of his set was again pretty disappointing. By then, it was 5h00 and we were ready to head home. We sat down and waited until 5h30 so that my friend could catch the first métro of the morning, and then we headed out and made our separate ways home. I walked a few blocks and grabbed a Vélib bike to make my way home.

Peruvian Food Orgy and Happy People Only

Yow! It’s been several days without a blog post. I’m actually going to just forget about catching up for the majority of this week, since it was pretty unexciting: at work, I struggled with a student’s laptop that was infested with a bunch of worms; in teaching, I had another set of pleasant English classes; at home, I was getting ready to hold my first Peruvian Food Orgy in Paris.

Today was the day for the aforementioned Peruvian foodfest, so most of today’s news are related to that and to the evening of debauchery that followed. This was my first time holding this type of event in France, so the pressure was on to prove to my Frenchy friends that I was as capable in making Peruvian grub as I had said. I’m not working in the same sort of apartment I have back in Chicago (to say the least), so I had to scale back my plans. I made about 10 dishes instead of the usual 20. On the upside, this meant that I had less stuff to worry about during the week. Back in Chicago, I started some of the marinades and salsas on Tuesday or Wednesday in preparation for the Friday meal. Here, I did my shopping on Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening, the salsas and marinades Thursday night, and the majority of the cooking throughout today.

I got up relatively early (considering that I wasn’t working today) and headed over to my neighborhood open-air market to get some last-minute items. I wanted super-fresh fish for the ceviche, so I got it this morning. It was ridiculously expensive, but not entirely surprising for good fresh swordfish (25€ / kg). I got some mangos as well, since the ones I had bought on Tuesday were so overripe that they had become discolored and odd-tasting. I got a bit more herbs and spices as needed, and a few more hot peppers.

As soon as I got home, I got to work on the ceviche, the mango salsa, and “step 2” of my aji de gallina (i.e., pulling the meat from the hen’s carcass and shredding it, draining and reserving the stock). I then took a break to run to the nearest supermarket to get some supplies (including surprisingly expensive paper plates and cups) and then headed back home for the final stretch.

From there on in, it was total cooking madness. I made the rice and the BBQ pork for the fried rice, I made a batch of quinoa, I set up the tables and the serving platters, and then I started finishing the main dishes.

As I started cutting the vegetables for the final sauce of aji de gallina, I heard a knock at the door. One of my friends had volunteered to come a bit early and help me prepare, so I let her in and put her to work immediately. I made her stick the anticuchos on the skewers as I finished cutting the vegetables for the aji. A second friend showed up, opened a bottle of wine, and we started to finish the aji de gallina. By the time I had finished the whole thing, blended and thickened the sauce to a paste, and then added back the shredded chicken, my apartment was about half-full. I had invited about 18 people to my place, and my small studio was handling it surprisingly well.

As the last wave of people arrived, I worked on the fried rice (which stuck too much to the bottom of the pan) and eventually got everything onto the table. Once I had had a moment to eat some of my food and explain the dishes to the various guests, I headed back into the kitchen and deep-fried the yucca (a.k.a. cassava, manioc) and handed it around the party. Finally! Done cooking. Now, dishes.

The original plan for the party was that I did all the cooking and my guests brought drinks. Not only did my friends all bring drinks, they decided to bring a full bottle of wine per person, rather than per group/couple. This meant that we had about 17 bottles of wine to go through. So, by the time I had finished cooking and started drinking, we were all a bit tipsy.

And then two of my friends brought pisco (Peruvian, not Chilean!) and the fixings to make pisco sour. Yay! They made a huge batch, using the whole bottle, and started handing out cups of it to the whole party. I don’t think they realized that pisco is a bit stronger than whiskey, so when they gave out large cups full of the stuff, they were essentially distributing two drinks in one. About 20 minutes later, everyone was pretty drunk. In the midst of it all, one of my friends decided to start doing my dishes, which was both hilarious and much appreciated.

By about midnight, it was time for us to start moving. Tonight was also the last night for Fantômette’s “Happy People Only” series and we all needed to be there before 1h30. Realizing how hard it would be to move such a large group of people, we started getting ready to leave right away. The story of us getting to La Scène Bastille is a bit hazy in my memory, but I recall it being pretty hilarious.

Happy People Only closing party @ La Scène Bastille

We got to La Scène Bastille at about 1h15 and made our way into the club. After dropping off my stuff at the coat check, I headed in, bought a drink, and made the rounds to greet any friends that I hadn’t seen at my dinner party. There was a pair of guys spinning called AidAke (a.k.a. the Luberjaks), but they were just finishing their set as I arrived, so I can’t say much about their set.

1h30-3h00: Fantômette

Fantô really rose to the occasion with a fantastic set (after all, it was the last installment of a series that she had been organizing for a couple of years). The importance of tonight’s event prompted me to compare her performance to her work at some of the earliest Happy People Only occasions, and so much has changed. Her mixing technique is now flawless to the point of being “invisible” and effortless. She manages to align tracks in such a way that major changes in texture occur simultaneously in both tracks being mixed; in other words, she extends the “rule of multiples of 4” from the tracks themselves to the mix between them. Her selection of tracks is solid—not just in the aesthetic sense of choosing good minimal-house tracks, but also in the narrative sense of sequencing tracks in a way that avoids clashes of texture and style.

The crowd, many of whom know Fantômette personally or have come to know her as the resident of this recurring night, showed their appreciation as well. People cheered and pumped their fists every time she brought the bass back, and the applause at the end of her set was long and strong. As a friend of mine said tonight: she’s a “pro” now. There’s no doubt that she is well beyond the realm of “local amateur” or anything like that.

3h00-4h30: Siskid

I don’t think I’ve seen Siskid perform before, but I’ve heard good things about him. His set was very good, although he preferred pounding, aggressive techno rather than finely wrought minimal. I still definitely enjoyed his set for the intensity and overall impact, but it felt a bit coarse. I’m still a pop-and-click-minimal boy at heart, so I’m never 100% excited when I hear these full-throated “minimal” sets. It’s sort of like the equivalent of the “big-room techno” genre within the domain of “minimal” music.

At some point during his set, a female friend of mine started fooling around with a male acquaintance that I had just met that night. He would feel her up and try to kiss her, and she would sometimes oblige, and sometimes push him away playfully. After a while, another friend of mine—male and very much queer—came over to them and started talking to the couple. He was very good friends with the girl, but he spoke intensely with the guy for a few minutes.

I don’t know who made the proposition, but suddenly the two boys started making out. My female friend looked over at the two of them, then turned to the rest of us with an expression that said, “These boys are insane,” and kept on dancing. When they started kissing again, I leaned over to her and made a joke, along the lines of, “Watch out! If they start slipping tongue, it’s over.” She replied, “Apparently, the point of this is to make me jealous.” We shrugged and continued dancing and exchanging amused glances. Eventually, the necking finished and my gay friend, rather drunk, moved on to acting ridiculous with another set of friends. In short order, the “straight” guy went back to caressing and kissing my female friend.

I thought that this was a really fascinating convergence of trust, desire, humor and sensuality. As my own experiences with French guys [LINK] confirms, there can often be a lot of flexibility around sexuality and sensuality within the frame of “a night out,” especially when it’s been enabled / enhanced by intoxicants. There’s a certain practice of “coming undone” that makes these sorts of scenes non-dramatic and non-shattering. There was no drama about the boyfriend turning gay or the friend flirting with his friend’s object of desire (although maybe there was some tension below the surface) but rather a shock-absorbent layer of laughter and absurdity. It’s just a party, after all…

4h30-6h00: Newborn

This is the same duo that spun at the last Happy People Only as Nathan H and his friend, GuiGui. They managed to spin a set that was technically quite solid, although I wasn’t always thrilled about their track selection. They tended to lean more towards classic “electro” styles and even progressive-house sounds, which didn’t really excite me. Nonetheless, some of the tracks they selected were great, and the overall feel of the set was quite engaging.

I wasn’t able to catch the whole set, though, as I started feeling tired around 5h30 and decided to head home. I had been up since relatively early, slaving over a hot stove, so I was feeling pretty exhausted. I made my rounds of saying goodbye, then left with a Frenchy friend of mine (from my Berlin Summer), and eventually found a Vélib station and biked home.

Fairmont at Batofar

I had actually stayed out pretty late last night, about 4h30 or so, as I had hung out at a friends place with some others for a while. So I slept in rather late and got up slowly. I spent some time catching up on blogging, working on some of the photos I had taken in the last week, and caught up on some correspondence. My network router was giving me some trouble, too, so I spent some time tinkering with it and eventually updating the firmware. As it turns out the Linksys WRT54G has a whole range out open-source firmware available.

Anyway, my friend Damien (a.k.a. Timid Boy) was going to be spinning tonight at Batofar before one of the headliners, Fairmont from the Border Community label (also known as Jake Fairley on Dumb-Unit). Damien had put me on the guestlist and I’ve never been disappointed by a Jake Fairley live set, so I decided to check it out. I hopped on my bike for some much-needed exercise (I think I’ve gained a bit of weight this week, despite my bike-riding) and headed over to Batofar. The bar is located about 5 minutes’ walk from my workplace, so the route was familiar and easy to undertake, even in the dark.

When I got to the club—which is in a large boat floating on the river Seine—there was already a line nearly all the way across the pier. Ugh. I braced myself and sent a text message to Damien to make sure that, indeed, I was on the list. Fortunately, the line moved pretty fast and I was on the list, so I got in easily. Alas, the long line outside was a foretoken for the craziness inside; the coat-check was already full at 1h00, the interior was hot and sweaty, and the entire dancefloor was PACKED.

0h00-1h30: Timid Boy

One of the upsides of there being such a huge crowd this early in the night was that Damien had a lots of people to play to, which allowed him to play a more dynamic set. As a DJ, you’re expected to adjust the tone of your set to the crowd in the room; it can look a bit ridiculous to play pounding, high-intensity music to an empty room. So Damien was able to make the most of his rather early timeslot and lay down a very strong set. He stayed mostly in minimal-house and full-on house territory, with an emphasis on bassy grooves that had a forward, driving motion.

I ran into lots of people I know, including the group of people connected to Damien as well as other folks I know from the Paris scene. We hung out together and chatted a bit, but it was hard to talk very much, as the crowd was so tightly pressed together.

1h30-2h30: Fairmont

Fairley’s set was really fantastic. There was little about it that would qualify his sound as the sort of “minimal” techno that has been emanating from Berlin for so long; it was much more emphatically in the realm of straightforward techno, but with a focus on non-canonic sounds in the high registers that you would usually hear in “minimal” / microhouse. A friend standing next to me said, “I call this neo-trance.” I would’ve never thought of calling Fairmont’s sound anything approaching trance, no doubt because I’ve never been a fan of trance and so labeling this style as trance-like wouldn’t really be a good thing. But when I thought about it, I sorta saw what he meant. The underlying rhythmic groove is certainly techno, but his frequent use of sustained, spatialized samples (often called “pads”) and his attention to long build-ups do refer to the trance style.

It’s also worth noting that his live set was a “gear-only” live set. That is, his music was entirely produced by an assemblage of “physical” sound devices, like samplers and sequencers, rather than the “virtual” sound devices on a laptop. I’m a skeptic of that whole “live sets are better when the performer’s setup looks like an electronics pawn-shop” authenticity claim, but these days it’s pretty noteworthy when someone does a non-laptop live set.

I spent most of Fairmont’s set being stepped on or trampled by various people, as the place was totally and completely packed. I don’t think I’ve ever been in Batofar when it’s been this full. It also didn’t help that something about the water or maybe the sheer number of people on the boat made it sway back and forth all night, which meant that the dancefloor was shifting from right to left all night long, and at some pretty disorienting angles. This meant that the tall drunk people who were dancing on top of me would frequently lose their balance and careen into me. It was something of a miracle that I finished the night without any drinks on me.

2h30-4h00: Eric Labbé

I had last seen Labbé spinning at the last Happy People Only party, and he had impressed me with his selection if not so much with his technique. This time, I found his selection decent, and his technique pretty far off. He managed to create some pretty noticeable trainwrecks as he had trouble beat-matching. Considering the constant listing of the boat, I would’ve been willing to chalk up some of this to “technical difficulties,” except Timid Boy / Damien had given a flawless performance a couple of hours ago.

4h00-???: Popof

Popof started later than had been expected, and played a vinyl set instead of a live set. What I heard through the grapevine later on was that he showed up to the club late and announced that he was just going to do a short vinyl set instead of the planned live set. As you might imagine, this pissed off some of the people involved in organizing the night. Live sets are more expensive than vinyl sets; you can only demand 1 hour of work from the performer for a live set, as it is much more work-intensive to prepare, which means that you have to spend more money filling up the rest of your evening with DJs. I felt bad for Damien in particular, as he was supposed to do a second set from 4h30-6h00, but with Popof starting 30 minutes late and possibly running longer, there was a possibility that Damien wouldn’t spin the closing set.

I went outside onto the docks to get some fresh air, since I wasn’t really enjoying Popof’s set (too coarse and heavy), and saw a young girl, surrounded by a group of friends, yelling curses and insults at the top of her lungs, apparently directed toward the club or the club’s staff. After eavesdropping for a few minutes, I figured out that some guy had tried to feel her up in the club; she had gotten the bouncers to kick him out, but her own reaction was violent and loud and, when she refused to calm down, they threw her out of the club as well.

Her friends stood around her and smiled uncomfortably and occasionally tried to calm her down, but otherwise let her rant. What was interesting to me (aside from the mixture of empathy and exasperation that the spectacle elicited in me) was how she was self-stimulating. That is, she would begin by muttering to herself and to anyone around her about how she had been wronged, and then her own words would raise her affect and within seconds she had spiraled into a screaming litany of abuse. At times, when she got really angry / upset, she was practically incoherent; just a word-salad of insults. Then she would calm down for a moment, pull on her cigarette, and then start muttering again.

I went back down into the club to see if I could make myself enjoy Popof’s set, but after another 30 minutes or so, I gave up and headed out. As I left, that same girl was still alternately muttering and screaming while her friends milled about restlessly.

Double-Booked

My daytime activities today were relatively prosaic. After a successful morning at the market, I came home, fed myself some of the spoils of my shopping, and then set about doing some writing, take care of some business, and running a few errands.

In the afternoon, on my way home from some of these errands, I came across an Algerian pastry shop called La Bague de Kenza, which has this hard-to-resist storefront full of piles and piles and piles of little cakes made of various combinations of almonds, pistachios, honey, orange-flower water, and various other nuts. I went in and asked for an assortment of 12 pieces, with the idea that I could slowly work on them as the week goes on. When I got home, I ate 6 of them in 1 hour. Clearly, I’m not allowed back in there again without supervision.

All of the nuts in those Algerian desserts really filled me up, so I wasn’t really interested in dinner until around 21h00, and even then I was almost reluctant to eat. I headed over to Belleville (only a short walk from my new apartment!) and had a bowl of Pho at my favourite Viet soup place, TinTin. From there, I wandered over to L’Ile Enchantée, a café on the nearby boulevard de la Villette, where my buddies Molly and Damien (a.k.a. Timid Boy) were spinning; these were the folks I had hung out with on the parade float of Le Rex at the Techno Parade two weeks ago.

After hanging out with them and watching them start their sets, I said my goodbyes and headed over to my next stop, which was at On Cherche Encore, where Fantômette and Franck Valat were taking turns spinning. I ran into most of the Frenchy-Berlin Krew there, so we hung out and caught up and had overpriced drinks and generally had fun. I had planned on heading home a bit early and getting some good sleep, but then I got caught up in conversation and suddenly discovered that the bar staff had turned on the lights and cut the music. Was it already 2h00?

I spent the next few minutes explaining the expression “time flies when you’re having fun” to my friends.

Kate Simko at Léopard

Well, I had totally forgotten to post my pictures from the Richie Hawtin / Minus label night last Sunday, so here’s one photo that I took that seemed to capture the madness of the event:

Anyway, most of my day today was pretty unexciting, but toward the end of the evening I went out to Café Léopard to meet a friend from Chicago, Kate Simko, who is a DJ and Producer that has been gaining attention with her most recent release and an interview on Resident Advisor. She was passing through Paris between her weekend in Berlin and an upcoming date spinning at Fabric in London (this Saturday).

She got a gig spinning Thursday night at Le Léopard café, which was kinda ridiculous. There were maybe 15 people in the whole café, the sound system was tinny and low-fi, she barely had any monitor to work with, and so on. The next day, as I talked with my Parisian friends that are in the scene here, all of them had the same reaction, “What was she doing at Le Léopard?!” Make no mistake, the next time Kate passes through Paris, I’m going to make sure she plays at a place that’s more her speed.

Nonetheless, she made the best of her less-than-optimal conditions, and I have the perky photo to prove it:

Of Butchers and Bawdy Humor

Woo! Post-splosion! This will be my 4th post today, finally putting me back on schedule for blogging.

Aside from the sweaty fun of biking to and fro around the city, there wasn’t much of remarkable that happened during the daytime today. I taught another English conversation class like the one I did yesterday, and the kids were similarly timid but capable. This group had more “Masters” students (i.e., “Second-cycle” or something like our M.A.), who mostly had better English skills—but I still had to repeat yesterday’s gesture and tell students to stop talking when others are talking.

After biking home from work, I realized that I had biked intensively for about 90 minutes in total that day, and I deserved a good meal. I had a nice bottle of Burgundian wine waiting for me at home that would go well with some poultry, so I decided to hit the butcher / poultry shop on the corner of Oberkampf and St.-Maur. As I walked in, one of the butchers was busy teasing the old man at the counter:

“You want sausages? You like my sausages, eh? Yeah, I saw that twinkle in your eye, you perv, you want my sausage.”

“You want a good steak? What on earth makes you think you deserve one of my good ones?”

“Veal? I know you like them young, but that’s just sick.”

The old man was laughing and keeping up with the jokes, alternating between feigned outrage and equally lewd innuendo. At a certain point, the old man noticed that I had entered the shop and complained to the butcher, “This young man is going to think I’m some sort of weirdo.”

“Oh no,” the butcher replied, “I’m sure he’s been in here before and seen how we behave.”

“Actually,” I said, jumping in, “this is my first time in here.”

A round of laughter, as if this had just made things all the more hilarious.

“Well great!” the Butcher said, “What an introduction to the neighborhood. You see how friendly we are here, no?”

“No kidding.”

From the cash register, his wife groaned and rolled her eyes, “You can take both of them, please. They’re filthy, filthy men.”

“Do you see the abuse I take here?” said the old man, gesturing at the entire staff.

“Oh, come on,” chided the butcher, “you know you like it. You keep coming back for more.”

“Whatever,” said the butcher’s wife, chuckling and absentmindedly rubbing her tracheotomy scar, “As long as he’s buying our meat, I don’t care how rough he likes it.”

If anybody needed an argument for small, owner-run shops, this is it. They probably aren’t the cheapest place to get meat in this neighborhood, and the roasted chicken I got was actually a bit over-roasted, but I know that I’ll be back.

Teaching English among the smart kids

Well, yesterday was the day when I finished revising my proposal, but today was the day I spent actually re-formatting, proof-reading and otherwise preparing my proposal to be read and approved by my thesis advisor. I managed to take care of most of that during my work day, and then I headed over to the Ecole Nationale des Chartes to teach an English class. I got a small gig at a rather prestigious post-secondary school (part of the Sorbonne, grandes écoles [LINK] cluster in Paris), which involves conducting conversation in English for 2 hours twice a week in the afternoon. The school is almost exclusively about history and archivism, as the school's mission is described on it's website as "the education of curators of written heritage." One of the main "undergrad" programs is archivist-paleographer.

I biked my way over to the school in the 6th arrondissement (largely uphill, I might add), arriving well before the class would start. Since I have about 2 hours between my day-job and this teaching gig, I think I’m going to start making a habit of frequenting the cafés on the nearby rue Mouffetard. The students were timid but capable of struggling through a basic self-introduction and mostly understood what I was saying. I saw a few of them (I think straight out of high-school) look at each other with wide eyes when I switched from French into English, but I did my best to reduce my Canadian accent and slow my speech. We’ll see how it goes.

Oh, and just to show that things are often the same on either side of the globe, I had to stop discussion about 30 minutes into class to tell the students that talking in class was something that makes me very, very cranky. I taught them a new expression: “pet peeve.”

Anyway, I kept them busy until about 19h00 and then headed home. It was raining and awful outside, so I slouched my way over to the nearest subway station and made my way home the “traditional” way.

Got home from last night around 6h00.

Woke up at 10h00.

Climbed onto a bike and made my way, slightly dazed, to work.

Had a surprisingly productive day at work

Got home and ate some leftovers and

.

.

.

.

…wait for it…

.

.

.

.

FINISHED MY PROPOSAL REVISIONS!

I still have to take care of re-formatting everything and so on, but HOORAY I’M DONE SQUEEZING OUT PROSE.

For now. I suppose I’ll have to write my whole dissertation soon.

Fuck.

Well, that euphoria was short-lived.

Richie Hawtin, Ambivalent and Gaiser at Le Rex

Well.

I’m just a little bit behind on this whole blogging thing. Like, nearly a week behind. Gah! Alright, let’s catch up.

Usually, my Sunday posts are the shortest, since I’m usually recovering from whatever I did on Saturday and I probably won’t be awake for very long (this was especially true in Berlin). Today, however, was different. Three DJs from the Minus label were spinning at Le Rex tonight, including the über-famous grand-daddy of minimal techno, Richie Hawtin. In fact, you can tell how famous this guy is by the fact that he wasn’t going to spin until 3h30 in the morning on a Sunday night / Monday morning, and the cover was 15€. And the place was PACKED by the time he got on the decks. It was madness. Anyway, back to my story.

I slept in for a good long while, then made some breakfast, wandered around the corner to get some bread, and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening working on my proposal revisions. I’m so close to done I can taste it, and it tastes like relief.

I had a few friends planning on joining me tonight, and one of them happened to be near my neighborhood at a later point in the evening, so he came over and hung out at my place with a bottle of wine. Some time later, a friend from Berlin (French, but living in Berlin) came over and we met in the café downstairs for a glass of wine and some more chatter (mostly about US Politics). We waited for the final member of our group to show up, but he was taking a long time, so we told him to meet us in front of the club and we hopped on the subway.

In front of the club, I ran into Molly, the DJ I had hung out with at the Techno Parade and also the person who takes care of bookings for the Rex. On a busy (and expensive) night like tonight, she couldn’t get us in for free, but at least she was able to put us in the shorter guest-list line. I was surprised to find that the guy at the door recognized me and let me and the group through without question. Yay! Connections!

After checking our coats and grabbing drinks, we made our way over to the dancefloor, where I ran into a cluster of friends, including a few from the Berlin krew from the summer. Throughout the course of the evening, we would be split up and find each other again, sometimes separated by the crush of the crowd, sometimes simply by a short “mission” (i.e., peeing, getting a drink). We sorta migrated all over the place, but we eventually ended up front and centre by Richie’s set.

22h30-2h30: Ambivalent

The night started a lot earlier than it usually does for the club, but I suppose they wanted to give Richie enough time to play a long set, which meant pushing back the other sets a bit. Anyway, we didn’t really get inside until maybe midnight.

I had seen Ambivalent last week at the N.A.M.E. festival in Lille, and I had enjoyed the set, although some of my companions found his touch a bit “cold.” This set tonight, however, was pretty disappointing. He had consistent trouble beat-matching records and his track selection was pretty inconsistent; some good tracks, but also lots of so-so ones. It wasn’t horrible or anything, but it was pretty underwhelming, considering the prestige that usually comes with the Minus label.

2h30-3h30: Gaiser live

Gaiser’s had also played at the N.A.M.E. festival last week, and this set was pretty similar in sound, even if the content was a bit different. His set was more intense than Ambivalent’s, and the overall style was less house-influenced and more straight-ahead techno. It certainly qualified as “minimal” in the sense of long-looping structures with gradual changes, but the texture was pretty thick: heavy bass, lots of mid-freq stuff, but relatively light in the treble range.

I’m now totally convinced that there is something aphrodisiac about Panorama Bar in Berlin, because I was made to realize that I haven’t had the slightest lustful thought about a DJ since I’ve left Berlin. A friend that was dancing with me commented on Gaiser’s appearance saying, “Yeah, I could see myself fucking him.” And my reaction was something like, “Yeah, I suppose he’s cute. Never really thought of it, to be honest.” That is pretty much night-and-day contrast with my days at Panorama Bar, where I had to resist the urge to vault the turntables and jump on certain DJs (you’ll have to read through the Berlin chronicles to find out which ones).

3h30-6h00: Richie Hawtin

I was sort of worried about being disappointed by Hawtin. He’s actually from my region of Canada, so I’ve seen him a zillion times since I started in the rave scene back in 1995, and he has a tendency to oscillate between AMAZING sets and totally disappointing sets. The last time I had seen him (I think) was almost 2 years ago, here in Paris, on the same weekend as Nuit Blanche (does he come here every year at this time?). Anyway, that had been a really good set, so I was almost braced for a disappointment this time.

Thankfully, the set was fantastic. He was in his more heavy-handed minimal style rather than the fine and sparse style that he often employs for his recordings. He used the same form for his set as the last time I had seen him—episodic excursions into less conventional tracks that regularly return to “full” techno tracks—but he didn’t go quite as far afield this time. None of his “episodes” really went in a drastically different direction, but there was still that alternation between “departure” and “return” that makes his sets so dynamic (usually).

The crowd was almost unbearable at the beginning of the set, but by about 4h30 people had started going home (most of them preparing to work in a couple of hours), so the dancefloor opened up a bit. By 5h00, I was getting tired and realizing that I needed to be awake by 10h00, so I made my goodbyes and headed out. I managed to find a Vélib station about half a block uphill from the club and made my way home, which was thankfully not far away. Phew!