good weather bonus multiplier / who is hiring

there’s a multiplier, like a bonus multiplier, for how much better paris is in nice weather compared to the cold, grey cloud in which it was enveloped for the december-march doldrums.  it’s somewhere between 3x and 10x and still tbd and not exaggerated.

everybody is outside playing.  old people are hanging on benches, packing squares, spitting philosophy and politics and nonsense to anyone who will listen.  crowds that usually packed barber shops and cafés are spilling out onto sidewalks and stoops.  kids are actually playing.  man.  it’s great.

there’s a canal in the northeastern part of the city called le canal st. martin.  in january, it became my staple running route, and as the weather got nicer and nicer, punctuated by my return into three days of 70 degree sunshine, its banks have been flooded with the parisian youth, hands full of wine and cigarettes from afternoon to early morning.  It's lively and fun.

the reboot

readers, fans,

after quitting my job and returning to paris from a monthlong trip to the united states to replenish my body's need for family love, plutocratic market capitalism, and pabst blue ribbon, i've decided to reboot the NJiT blog.

in the words of one of the greatest anti-heroes of the mid-2000s whose movie had a trailer that was significantly better than the movie itself (at 0:46),


more to come soon.

yo i wrote a thing for vice

happy valentine's day!

slipped a lil piece on parisian undocumented rose sellers into the Valentine's Day slate of releases on VICE.

big changes / becoming friends with the soju man

well

i had anticipated that the blog post following my last would dive deep into what i’d begun writing -- uncharted paths, disorientation, adjustment, existential crises, etc. this still might touch on that, but life has changed dramatically since i last checked in, team.

i made friends

cassoulet festival, i hate math, first inklings of paris

i moved to paris eight days ago.

while the first, say, five or six days were just a whirlwind of spacially and physical reorientation and constant stimulation, the last two or three have been the first few in what i assume will be manymany of a psychological and existential reorientation of self.  a medicore analogy to help visualize:  think about when you put a new address in google maps on your iphone and it goes temporarily haywire and spins around and changes direction NESW and altitude etc. before finally pointing in the direction that you’d set.  but then, this time, you look on the maps and everything behind you is filled in but all that lies before you is blank, ‘sorry, road not recognized.’  null territory ahead.

on professional soccer/rugby/surprising musical guests in a small french town

god a blog piece.  sorry to keep the fans waiting.  it’s been a while, it’s been a while.  august seventh was the last one, really?  lord.

i’ve wanted to write on and incorporate some of the photos / videos i’ve taken, but i actually don’t think my phone can usb transfer files.  if you know cs or wizardry, please let me know.

(in the meantime, sans images)

THINGS I WOULDN’T HAVE EXPECTED TO SEE IN A SMALL SW’rn FRENCH VILLAGE WITH A POPULATION OF <12,000*

monks in the moshpit

note:

i've sort of gotten to know a monk who practices on the (built in 1775 by famed family of organ builders, the cavaille-coll family, and now classed as a historical monument) organ that sits in the balcony directly above my head, often until after i close up shop.

i have this idea of monks kind of looking like friar tuck in the animated version of robin hood, but this dude looks like he could be a soccer player or something.  he's one suave looking monk.

ketchup ketchup

(my new job is me sitting in the back of a church saying hi and bye to people as they enter and exit and, when someone mercifully asks me questions, i get to have human interactions.  but i'm rarely online so these are things i write in a notebook and once i'm home i don't really want to write more so they're delayed.)

i saw the tour de france the morning after that last blog post.  grandpa had an already-twice-rescheduled dentist appointment to get to, so he dropped me off a the bottom of a category 4 hill and i climbed it en shorts/high socks/straw hat (i've been on the alone game a fair amount since then, including the few days in paris, which actually won't be covered on in this blog post because i'm going to write thematically rather than chronologically) up two km to a nice niche on a steepish slope from which i could see riders from a few turns down.  didn't help much -- they zoomed by, it was early in the race and it was an easy climb.

thoughts on home and 'home' and lebron

yo team

légionnaires with axes

lebron came back to cleveland last week.

i'd love to say that i know exactly how to approach lebron's return, and that my facebook and sports and winter break and suburban upbringing affinity to cleveland has endowed me with an indelible sense of place in which i not only have a finger on the pulse of the city, but am the pulse itself.  i want to hop onto the narrative of current vogue in the national media and say things like cleveland is the next williamsburg and claim this narrative as true.

milestone #2: got my luggage

thought i'd wait until a good landmark to throw up an update, and finally receiving my long-awaited luggage seemed like as good of a milestone as i was gonna get.

thank god.  it had been nine days and many unanswered calls and emails from the baggage delivery service and icelandair.  maybe someone was on strike -- that happens here.  having expressed my displeasure, however, i maintain that everything comes with a silver lining.  i had to borrow clothes from my grandfather, a splendidly dressed man, and saw my stock skyrocket in the 60-80 year old french female demographic.  the numbers were through the roof, really.