zZz is playing: Grip

I'm working on a couple of post, and in the meantime I thought I could let you have a look at a bouncing video. The artist kindly gave me permission to post in on the blog.
Have fun!

Gargoyles In An Aroused State Of Turmoil!

Happy New Year again ya all,

FBC! is still very jetlagged and therefore not very good at writing in what is a foreign language. So instead of writing a long post about Bakthinian theories of steam release, Rabelais, medieval ribaldry and so on, I'm letting pictures speak for themselves.
The gargoyles are and have been adorning the same church in my boring hometown for a few centuries, without any need for prudish censors to ask for their removal. But for those of you who work at places where censorship reigns I've avoided descriptive vocabulary. Who needs words when you have pictures anyway?

It was a bit tricky to take the pictures, but I trust you can spot how powerfully implemented our beastly friends are. I'm also showing a female one, obviously created prior to the invention of Brazilian-Bikini-waxing techniques.


Have fun!

Happy New 2008 To You

My Dear Beloved, Devoted Readership,

I'm sure most of you started the New Year with a bad hangover, so maybe the picture above won't really lift your spirits - I truly wanted to start 2008 by getting the worst joke out of the way, arf.

Anyway, my Frenchy self is back in lovely Los Angeles where the temperature is clement, people are nice (bye-bye, awful French cashiers and waiters!) and Pomme the cat was impatient to share new adventures. So far I've held my resolution not to speak German to her anymore, so hopefully I'll be good on the losing weight and finding a job ones too. I'm sure my immense readership vowed to honed its French skills and be able to read all the links I'm providing, right?

In the meantime, I'll work on a few posts, will find someone to help me redesign the blog and if all goes well we'll move URL and on to Wordpress later this year. Next art post should be on the Ugo Rondinone-curated show at the Palais de Tokyo and the former Musee des Monuments Francais in Paris.

Have a happy, fruitful and fun 2008, and watch out on the road for idiot/distracted drivers.

Where Food Comes From Part Deux

Blogger being a pain in the neck to upload pictures, I have to post in increments. I therefore announce to an incredulous and busy world, on this Christmas Eve, that my New Year resolution for 2008, aside from losing weight, finding a job and ceasing to speak to my cat in German, is to switch the blog to Wordpress, redesign it and put Google Ads on it next year. Non mais alors!

Where Food Comes From

In France Christmas is really about 1) food, 2) food, 3) more food and 4) presents. I don't know anyone in my immediate circle (family and friends) who has any religious associations with the holiday, instead we celebrate in joyous Pagan fashion with our families after 3 or 3 days spent slaving away in the kitchen and several weeks of food shopping and preparation.

But unlike America, in France we like to know where our food comes from, whether we are personally acquainted or not with GlouGlou le Dindon or Gédéon The Goose, Homère Le Homard or even our fishy friends, in the immortal words of Pierre Desproges "Le Congre que le Bar abhorre et le Bar que le Congre hait" (you could spend 6 months trying to translate the puns, so I won't).
In America, alas, poultry doesn't even look like poultry (and I'm not speaking about the taste) and fish, arrggl, how can you people eat something so unfresh looking, already filleted and therefore impossible to assess their freshness. It's a shame. FIY, packing poultry in water to make it appear plump is a blasphemy against taste buds, fish doesn't grow on sushis and shellfish isn't cultivated in clam chowder either.

Si to educate my US foodie friends, I'm posting a few pictures of what animal food looks like and where it comes from. Fishermen bringing in the catch, whole cods and soles, live turkeys and dead fowls, I show you the works. Squeamish readers, vegetarians and vegans who landed on this page randomly, pass your way, Nature is cruel.

For the others, next time I'll tell you how to kill chickens, rabbits and fish and escargots. It may come handy one day.

More food pictures

Some pictures from the market

Dear readers,

you're either busy preparing for the holidays, or simply idling. Whatever, if you're checking FBC! to make you salivate a bit, I'm going to post a few pictures-only thingies, starting today with views from the Sunday and Friday Farmer's Market in Caen, administrative capital of the Calvados departement and anecdotically my hometown. Salivate!