a blind flaneur

Marketplace: Financial virtues of the frugal French 101708:
John Laurenson: Tonight, what with the financial crisis, it’s pig’s foot for dinner, not the seafood platter. But in France, people are used to living on a budget. Partly because it’s much more difficult than in Britain or the United States to spend money you don’t have.
Bruce Antolovich [...]

Thanks to Alex de Jong for pointing me to Amina’s Le dernier qui a parlé. It was France’s entry in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. It should have won but didn’t, according to RFI Musoque. This clip is Amina’s live performance in Rome on May 4, 1991. Her contest preview is just as [...]

You know he’s in there somewhere, hefting his club, grinding his massive molars on one prehistoric resentment or another. Why listen to Prozac when you can consult your own inner Neanderthal? Anthropologist Robert McCarthy has developed a computer model of Neanderthal speech based on ancient fossils from France. Now you can hear the cave man [...]

I’ve never wished to be a teenager again. I’m happy as an old geezer knowing what I know now. If I were 16, though, I’d jump on this opportunity to follow my nose to Provence.
The AFB Blog announces: “AFB and French beauty company L’Occitane are teaming up again to send four visually impaired [...]

A flood of visitors came to the blog yesterday, carried here on the tide of two search terms: Chantal Sebire. I didn’t know what that was about, so I searched with those terms as well. I quickly learned that Chantal Sebire is a French woman who is my age who wants legal permission to [...]

Late-breaking News: They went and did it. They hadn’t done it? AFP is reporting:
Nine months after winning the presidency on a promise to reform France, Nicolas Sarkozy ushered in major change in his personal life by marrying supermodel-cum-singer Carla Bruni.
Dubbed the “hyper-president” for his whirlwind style of governing, Sarkozy had recently earned another label [...]

I can’t get enough Édith Piaf at the Mouffe, so here’s another encore. This version of La Vie En Rose was filmed in 1954. Maybe Gen. Bourgeois will help me put together a future show devoted to Piaf’s signature song. I know it holds a dear place in his heart.
Café Mouffe opens every Friday [...]

Set 1: Édith Piaf. Non, je ne regrette rien 1961.
Ms. Modigliani picked the program for this week’s Mouffe after sampling the universe of Édith Piaf recordings on YouTube. She chose two live versions of her favorite Piaf song, “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”). The 1961 recording features the song’s [...]

Who wouldn’t want to meet Picasso, given the chance? Sometime after Lee Miller dropped by his studio when Paris was liberated, Brigitte Bardot made the pilgrimage, too. I think this shot comes from the French Riviera, not Paris, but close enough. The image also comes from somewhere deep in my childhood memory. Somehow even then [...]

Carla and Sarko on holiday in Egypt. [Source: guano]
You know a juicy story has jumped the shark when NPR devotes a think piece to it. Scott Simon weighs in on the Carla-Sarko affair with a cheesy shtick delivered with a faux French accent worse even than my Maurice Chevalier in Gigi impersonation. Here’s [...]