life, death, and art

(Odd formatting below, I know, I think it has something to do with the

embedded clip...)

Spent the morning watching youtube clips.

Started with the Seeds because their frontman just passed away,

but his death had been swept under the rug by Farrah Fawcett

and especially Michael Jackson.

I'm not a huge Seeds fan, but this led me through a bevy of old rock clips,

including the following little gem.

It's a song I never especially cared for recorded, but it's fantastic live.

But yes, yesterday was a strange and culturally significant day.

Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest in his current residence

in Holmby Hills. Coincidentally, I happened to be a few doors down

the day before at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, which I had

planned to blog about anyway. Up until a few days ago, I didn't even

know the area was called Holmby Hills, though I'd driven through before

to get a gander at the edge of the Playboy estate.

Anyway, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation is a large modern art

collection kept in the former residence of Mr. Weisman,

a two story house designed by Gordon B. Kauffman in the 1920s.

The house is fairly big, but the collection is bigger so there is art

EVERYWHERE, on every wall and in every corner or every room,

and quite often, on the ceiling as well. In the garden, in the front yard,

heck, there's even a piece in the pool (I kid you not).

There's so much art, that the Weismans had an annex built for the pieces

that were too large and difficult to store inside the house.

And it's a magnificent collection, three Yves Klein pieces just sitting out

in the open (and IKB looks phenomenal in person),

Magritte paintings and sculptures (who knew?),

a bed set designed by Mas Ernst, some early Picasso,

photo-collages by Hockney, portraits of the patrons by Warhol,

and more Lichtenstein than you can shake a stick at.

In other words, it was very cool.

We went through the collection on a tour that moved at warp speed

which took about two hours.

They bill themselves as LA's best kept secret,

I'd never heard of the collection and it's impressive,

so I'd say it definitely makes a top 10 list of secrets.

I went with my fellow interns, one of whom pointed out that

LA seems to be a town based on secrets.

From regular midnight screenings at fantastic and obscure movie theaters

to the best beaches, to dozens of canyon roads,

to all the "Little" country neighborhoods

(Little Somalia might be a personal favorite),

to the secret menu at In-n-Out, she definitely has a point.

Nevertheless, these are things you pick up pretty easily from living here.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation does not publicize at all,

it relies strictly on word of mouth, plus it's tucked away in the hills

on a residential street, so it qualifies as especially secret.

The Foundation is open Monday through Friday

and tours are by appointment only. I highly recommend it.

the blood arm, art brut, and chairlift

On the topic of French, I saw the trailer for Girl from Monaco, looks good, plus it's in French! (with English subtitles)

Alright, new topic.

Music!

Last weekend I went to see Art Brut Friday at the Echo (near Echo Park) and Chairlift Saturday at the Getty (Oh man! So many links, I can't even handle it).

Friday at the Echo, the Blood Arm opened for Art Brut. Their song "Suspicious Characters" is fun, so is "Attention" which is half in French! They have a lot of energy on stage, primarily because their lead singer, Nathaniel Fregoso, who hopped off the stage a few times, into the crowd to sing to us individually before jumping on top of the bar.

You have to look a little closely, but he's there atop the bar (below).

Then back off the bar and into the crowd to give me a big ol' sweaty kiss on the cheek.

However, it was Art Brut that I went to see and Art Brut delivered. They'd been in LA for 4 nights and I guess a lot of the people at the Echo had gone to the previous nights' shows at Spaceland. After 3 nights of stayin up late and gettin deaf, the crowd was a little lackluster, and a little older than I expected, a pretty even spread of 18-40+, and pretty mellow for the most part. But that didn't stop those of us up front from dancing! Most of Art Brut's music sounds more or less the same, but I love it, as I told my friend Maggie that night while walking back to the car (excuse me, as I yelled to her, as neither of us could hear a darn thing), they're one of the few bands that make me want to dance around AND genuinely laugh out loud.

Ready Art Brut?

I was milling around online Saturday afternoon, still trying to recover my ability to hear properly, when I stumbled upon a blog that mentioned Saturdays Off the 405 at the Getty. I'd heard that the Getty had a summer concert series but I hadn't really looked into it. It recently moved from Fridays to Saturdays, so that now every Saturday evening, the Getty hosts a free outdoor concert. FREE! That was enough to sell me. Although it helped that Chairlift was playing. They are responsible for the tune that accompanies one of the iPod Nano commercials, "Bruises." Like the Blood Arm, they've got a well-dressed woman rocking the keyboard (although these days, who doesn't?), but Chairlift's Caroline is the lead vocalist with a lovely voice and pretty, light brown eyes. They opened with an original song, followed by a cover of Snoop Dogg's "Sensual Seduction" which was alternately very steamy and very amusing.

I went with Stephanie and after the concert we wandered the Getty gardens at sunset; I don't think I'd ever been there that late in the day, it was absolutely lovely.

The effect is a weaker in a small picture as opposed to being there in person, but look closely at the chairs in the windows below.

It was a good weekend. Plus, about mid-day Sunday I realized I could hear properly again, so it was a really good weekend.

summer whatnot

I've been home for about 2 weeks now, but it feels like a lot longer. Unless I'm speaking French, France seems really far away. Except for last night. I had a dream that I was practicing French and English with some French students. They kept asking me vocab questions "What's the word for 'molle' in English?" and, this being an anxiety dream, I had no idea.

Upsetting? Yeah, it kinda was.

Upsetting enough that my solution was to speak French aloud to myself on the drive to my internship this morning. Maybe not the most effective way to practice, especially since I was simultaneously listening to an English-language album (Dirty Projector's Bitte Orca), but practice nonetheless...right?

Maybe not.

back home post-script

my semester abroad may be over, but the blog will continue

because, ladies and gents, the show must go on

back home

I tried to put a dirty napkin in the refridgerator yesterday, unfortunately I've been home long enough that I think this falls just outside the purview of jetlag.

I've been back in the States for a week and a half and I'm happy to be home. France was fantastic, but home is... well, home is home. My language prof prepped us for reverse culture shock, which definitely occured, but not quite to the extent that she described.

That said, the first time I went to an American restaurant, I nearly ordered in French.

Luckily I had just enough presence of mind to stop myself before I opened my mouth.

I did not however have the presence of mind the following day to remember that I was in America:

(in conversation)

"My dad gets back to America a day or two after I do"

"So...tomorrow?"

"Oh... right... I'm already in America, aren't I..."

After a couple of days I was functioning like a normal person again, more or less.

A few highlights from the long journey home:

Notre Dame hired a bus to drive us from Angers directly to Charles de Gaulle, leaving at 2:30 in the morning. This worked out well enough because I spent the day shopping and wandering the city and then I finished packing my bags at night. Angers is split in half by a river, and go figure, my last day in town was the first day I crossed the river. The edge of the river was very pretty and I passed some interesting shops, but I hadn't missed out on too much. I ate dinner with Isabel at a nice, classic French restaurant at Place du Ralliment in the center of town. Ralliment isn't much to look at these days, it's home to a beautiful theater, but the square itself is full of construction. However, it's lined with some of the best restaurants in Angers, and we returned to one we had visited earlier in the semester. I ordered a salad with cheese, tomato, oranges, toast, and duck pate; sounds a bit odd, yes, but it looked and tasted wonderful.

After dinner, I walked home and packed my bags; I finished a little after 1am, the same time my host mom came out of her room to check on me. She had taken an hour-long nap so she could be awake to say goodbye. We had a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen and reflected over the semester. Around 1:45 I ran back upstairs to grab my computer and I was ready to go. My friend Thomas had scheduled a taxi to pick him up at his house at 1:45 and then stop by my house right afterward, as he lived close by; keep in mind the bus was scheduled to leave at 2:30. Around 2am I got a call from Thomas that the taxi hadn't arrived yet. He'd called 4 times, but couldn't get through. He asked me if my host mom could drive, so I told him I would ask and call him back. I explained the situation to my host mom who promptly took control and phoned another taxi company. But we couldn't get through either! After about 3 more attempts, we finally got a hold of someone and had a taxi standing by if we needed it. I called Thomas back at 2:10, the original taxi had just arrived at his house. So we waited. Around 2:15 the taxi drove past my house to the end of the street. I walked outside, assuming Thomas had forgotten where my house was and I see Thomas running like a mad man from the end of the block telling me to get my bags because the taxi refused to back up. Madame Laporte, Thomas, and I threw my bags into the street and I said a quick goodbye to Madame, thanking her profusely for everything. As I turned around, the taxi driver had finally decided to back his car up to my front door. When he got out of the car to open the trunk he started complaining about how much luggage I had (Thomas had warned him, plus I think two and a half suitcases is perfectly reasonable for four months). However, the guys got the luggage in the trunk, I lept in the car, and we were on our way. The taxi driver continued to complain the whole ride, first about the construction that had consumed Angers, then about the luggage, then because Thomas mentioned that the bus was supposed to leave very soon. And on top of his poor social skills, the also had limited driving skills. It was raining so the streets we slick and dark as we sped through narrow and winding roads, only speeding up at sharp turns. I was holding onto Thomas for dear life because I couldn't find my seat belt. But at least we made it to the bus on time. The meter on the dashboard read 11.50, the price we owed, but as we got out of the car, the taxi driver informed us that we owed him AT LEAST 12 euros because he was given the wrong address and was forced to back up, a grave inconvenience that had caused the meter to misread the distance. Thomas gave him 12 euros, but he looked at the money and then looked at us and began to complain that it wasn't enough. Thomas claimed that was all he had (which was mostly true), and the cranky taxi driver left, muttering complaints of mistreatment. Thomas called him a vampire.

So that was the taxi driver.

We said our goodbyes to host families, friends, and professors before heading out of Angers plane-ward bound. I slept a bit on the ride, but this was difficult as out of the 12 of the students on the bus, probably half were drunk, and some were quite loud for the first hour or two. I can't imagine the bus driver was our biggest fan, especially when we insisted on belting the American National Anthem as we left Angers. We did settle down about half way there and most of us slept. However, when we arrived at the airport, the bus driver made one stop only because Charles de Gaulle is a difficult and confusing to navigate, or so he claimed. This one stop was very convenient for one of us, but the other 11 had to haul four months worth of clothes and souveniers across the concrete wilderness that is the second terminal of Charles de Gaulle on little to no sleep, and for a few unlicky souls, hungover. Exhausted though we were, we did make it through the security and to the gate with time to spare.

From the moment I was on the plane, lively American chatter buzzed all around me; the air stewards were pleasant, smiley, and very chatty; and before the plane took off I switched seats with a woman sporting bright purple hair so that she could sit by her friend in leopard print pants.

Home sweet home.