Too much to do!

Well it's been a busy few days! Sunday night was one of the coolest evenings I've ever had in France; I went to the Concert for Haiti out at the Zénith, a medium-sized concert hall on the outskirts of Paris. Here's a picture of the hall:
We got there on the late end, so we didn't have seats. Instead we were standing in the middle, which was actually MUCH cooler. Much more tiring, as we were on our feet for over 3 hours, but we were waaaaaay closer to the action, haha. Here I am with Jason, Basia and Paolo:
And then with Annalina and Iva:


It was very similar to the American version, with all sorts of top French pop stars getting in on the action. The highlight for me was very clearly Diam's, who I would say is like the Pink of France. Kind of an "in your face" rapper, who has some really incredible songs about contemporary France. There's one song that's absolutely amazing to use in the classroom, called Ma France à moi (My vision of France), in which she goes off against Le Pen and the far right. All very well done. Anyway, you can imagine what sort of shock it was when, last fall, she suddenly started wearing a headscarf:


Particularly because she's not of Muslim origin. She's actually half French, half Cypriot. She was raised here and converted to Islam a few years ago. Then she started wearing a headscarf, and the country was in a tizzy for a good few weeks. It was fascinating. She's as spunky as ever, though, and it was great to see her.

Other acts included Bryan's favorite, Rose:

I'm not a huge fan of Rose, I find her music a little slow. But on that night she sang one of my favorite French pop songs from the 90s, Alain Souchon's Foule Sentimentale. It's also kind of lame (haha), but what can I say, it's catchy. So she scored some points in my book with that choice.

Another of my favorites is DePalmas, who is actually pretty cute in real life. This picture does absolutely no justice to that, I know!


Anyway, so that was Sunday. The energy was really great, and I think they raised a good amount of money. I was also rather impressed by some of the programming, in that they presented work by Haitian authors and read a bit of Dany Lafferiere's excellent interview in Le Monde. This is why I love France at times...good to have the lit front and center sometimes! The Minister of Culture (Frederic Mitterrand, nephew of the late great François) even tried to speak Creole, which was pathetic but well intentioned!

Needless to say, I was fairly wrecked on Monday due to my late night. But it was worth every ounce of subsequent suffering. I couldn't take time to rest on Monday, however, because I had a big interview to prep: Rachid Djaïdani, the centerpiece author of chapter 4. I spent Monday reading through the press archives of book reviews on his work, and perhaps the funniest part was that I found a reference to a TV show he did in which he brought his dopey little French moped over to the States and traveled around Texas. Apparently for the hell of it. Since I was at the audiovisual archives I decided I might as well check it out, and it was hilarious. Kind of like a less malicious Borat, in the sense that he wasn't trying to make people look stupid. Instead it was just good natured--he walked into some random bar in the middle of nowhere asking to see cowboys, for example. The guys in there were like, "oh, ok, hop in the pickup truck, we'll take you to see the cowboys!" So they did. In another scene he went to a car dealership pretending to want to buy a big hog of a pickup and went through the motions with the outlandish dealer, who was clearly well aware of what he was caricaturing. In any case, it was just rather amusing to see the random French Arab guy bumbling along on his moped in the middle of Texas, hahaha.

So the big interview was yesterday, which was equally awesome. We met up in the 11th at this amazing Moroccan café, where he clearly knew everyone. He was back in the kitchen greeting everyone, and I got the royal treatment purely for being a Friend of Rachid. Except that I had just met him, haha. But no matter, he's clearly friends with everyone. And he was super helpful, so I got all sorts of great material for my chapter. Yay!

After all that excitement, I'm now trying to get organized to head to Berlin tomorrow!!! Kari and I are VERY excited, we're going to see everything. We're probably going to lose some limbs to frostbite as well, as the forecast is BITTER COLD. Like highs in the teens every day. ohhhhh. Needless to say, most of my luggage is made up of multiple pairs of long underwear, haha. I sure hope they have those things you can put in your shoes to warm your toes up!