Saturday, December 19, 2009

Amadeus

Perhaps one day, I will write a book, "How to become friends with your neighbors". But this title would be ironic.

At Thanksgiving I met two musicians at a friend's house . They are students at "The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University", and at the end of the evening, we made an appointment for a photo session at my studio in my apartment.

American houses have a problem. I think the guy who made the sound proofing code was deaf... In France we have a idiom for that, we say : ''The wall are made of paper". I think here it's the same.

My two musicians arrived on time, and I said '' take a seat, forget about me, play and go into your music world ." I never could have imagined the power of the cello and violin... I didn't know if my neighbors knew, but I'm sure they know now !!!

In two hours, I had become best friends or best enemies with my neighbors. that would depend on whether they loved classical music. Fortunately the musicians played magically. Perhaps if they had been beginners (or drummers), the story would have been different.




Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Godzilla vs the Thing

Known, in Japan by the name of "Mosura tai Gojira" and elsewhere by the name of " Mothra VS Godzilla", this movie features fairies, scientists and most importantly : a fight between a giant moth and a mutant dragon. This revered Japanese movie is a masterpiece ! You will love it... if you are Japanese.

My giant moth and mutant dragon are a hummingbird and a blue jay. When I was a child (it's a long time ago...) I saw on television a documentary about the hummingbird ; "oiseau-mouche" or colibri in french, (I don't know why, but a good friend of mine laughs at the french name... ''oiseau-mouche''.... It's not really funny but this guy is sometime a little strange I guess). So after this program I desperately hoped to see a hummingbird some day. When you are child, simple things make you happy, to day I need to be a lottery winnner to get the same high. This hummingbird is my Mothra...

When I arrived in Long Island, 18 month ago I saw a beautifull blue bird. My Godzilla. For the rest of the summer I hunted this beautifull bird (with a horrible screeching song... it can't have everythings, it's justice !). This bird loves to play hide and seek with my camera or if I spotted him he quickly flew into the distance.

Since the begining of last summer, I don't know why, but this bird became kinder and more sympathetic towards me. I was able to catch it in different poses. But even more exciting was the shooting of another species of blue jay during my last trip to California !

I don't know which bird is more intersting to me ? So it's my Mothra VS Godzilla.

Enjoy and if you have a recipe for one of those, send me an email (to understand this read my previous post ''The birds'').

PS : My stupid friend who laughed at ''oiseau-mouche'', gave me a compliment today. He saw one of my pictures, - a cactus, and said "Ho it's funny Charles, this picture looks like ''the Mac background plant''... So after ''Windows Vista Pictures'' (read my previous post)I should write a post on ''My future in the world of informartique ltd".

With that I'm sure to have a beautifull career as a photographer...

Humming bird



Blue jay from east coast





Blue jay from west coast

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Legends of the fall

'' I took a picture of a wild beer...'' At this point my friends thought '' Ok, Charles has lost his mind, this guy is over the edge''...

Let's go back a few weeks. I was in California, (I will tell you about this journey in a another post,) but today I want to tell you about one part of my trip - Yosemite... If you are in California, it would be sad to miss this park with these sequoias, rivers, mountains, plains, blue jays, deer, and wild beer...

I took many pictures, but I am most proud of the one of the famous wild beer. Don't imagine a big bottle of Corona, Budweiser, or Heineken. Try to imagine me telling this, with my fabulous French accent,  '' a wild beer...'', but if you say it with an American accent it becomes, '' a wild bear !''

I was very exited to tell my  friends about this encounter, and you cannot imagine my confusion, when I saw the disbelief in their eyes. Nobody understood me ! At this time, I thought my friends wanted to buy me a shirt, with very long sleeves to attach around my back. The apogee of this moment, was when I impersonated the bear to clarify my explanation. The worst thing was, my mime was a cross between a mummy and a bear...

Now, when I greet one of my friends, when  he raises his hand to say ''Hi'', I don't know if he is saying ''Hi'' or mocking my famous impersonation of the bear...

I also met a deer and reindeer, but I did not do a mime for them. Just... nothing. I don't know how to mime the difference between these two animals.

Seriously, you must visit this park, and if you can visit during the fall, don't hesitate,
it's wonderful.

As one my friends said to me, if you go to Yosemite you can take a '' Windows Vista picture" ( I lost his phone number and his address after that comment)....











Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Wargame

Unfortunately this is not a game or a funny post. I noticed that my pictures have been ''stolen"...!!!

I have two options. The first is to freeze everything and not put new pictures on my website, or I could brand my pictures like a horse  to prove they are mine.

It's too sad ''to destroy'' a picture like that, but sometimes you have no choice. The worst part of this story is this ; I try to take the most beautiful pictures I can, and the people stealing my pictures used a ''print screen''. This is the best way for losing all the quality of an image.

Now, all my pictures will be like the one below.

I hope everybody understands my point.


Tuesday, November 3, 2009

"Lion King" or "Lyon King"

Paris, Paris, Paris.... When someone asks me where I come from, (in fact nobody asks me because with my accent everbody knows,) as an echo to my answer I hear a syrupy voice say...."Aaaaaaaahhhhhh Paris" and the person lets out a sigh... Perhaps "Paris" is orgasmic, who knows ? But you must know this, in Paris the streets are covered in dog droppings, the Parisians are rude, it's always rainy and cold, the sun is "persona non grata", and the Parisian soccer team is really crappy...

Ok I confess it's not true (except for the soccer team), but the non-french person must know one thing : Paris is not the only beautiful city in France.

I love Manosque and its mountains, Carcassone and its ''cassoulet'', Caen and its cheeses, St. Raphel and its Mediterranean sea, La Bourboule and its thermal hot springs, the Alps and its ski resorts, Paris and its.... its nothing! As a rule, I don't like Paris... But above all, I love Lyon.

Lyon is an amazing city : gastronomic capital of France, in the middle ages it was the crossroads for the merchants of Italy and Spain, it was a center of silk making... It's the city of Auguste and Louis Lumière, the inventors of photography and the cinema, Paul Bocuse the most famous chef in all the world, the Olympique Lyonnais the best soccer team in the world (ok perhaps I exaggerate a little, but this team has won the national league 7 time in a row), and many other things. The blog is too short to do justice to this city.

If the child of King François the first had not been assassinated in Lyon, the history could have been different and Lyon could be the capital of France today.

In Lyon you can see the evolution of the city. If you stand at the Fourviere Cathedral, the panorama of Lyon is before you. You can see the architecture of the city unfurl in a front of your eyes ; Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 19th century and now.

When I lived in Lyon, one on my friends, who is very knowledgeable about her city and its history, was my own personal tour guide. She showed me many "traboules", these are old corridors in a building between two streets. The silk makers used these corridors to cross the town quickly and to protect themselves and the silk from the rain. I must confess, sometime it' s a little scary. It's very easy to imagine a cut throat or a pickpocket hiding in a shadows. At this moment of my visit I asked myself if my friend was suicidal. But no, she is psychologist.... ha... that's a point. Perhaps she had a depressed patient just before our visit and now, life is too boring for her... I controlled myself and I tried to listen to what she was saying, the history, the legends (you must know, in the middle ages, one pope lost a big jewel in the old street, and nobody ever found it...), so I preferred listening to her rather than my imagination... This visit was perfect, if you are not a cardiac patient (between your imagination and the topography of the city), try it.

So, in conclusion, I encourage everybody to visit Lyon. You could visit Paris too (execpt if you like soccer, forget it) but come to this city. If you want, I can give you the phone number of my friend and perhaps, if you are lucky, you may survive her tour, and appreciate it. And if you are verrrrry lucky you could find the jewel and it would pay for your travel expenses (don't forget to tip the guide at the end of your trip).









Thursday, October 15, 2009

Memento

I didn’t forget; I know, there have been two weeks without a new post. Some American friends should say to me “Hey man, WTF?!? ( I know my friends are sometimes a little rude, but I promise, all are good guys).

Actually I was very busy, in France we have an expression for that, when you are so busy, and you run everywhere and try to respect your dead line, you can say “I didn’t touch the ground”… In my case it was totally like that.

But, with my apologies, I have two gifts… In the first I have many posts in creation, little visit of the future; I will tell you about “ Moby dick ”, “Underworld”, “Californication”, “ Boston’s Girls ”, “ Finding Nemo ”, “ Escape from Alcatraz ”, “ Pirates of the Caribbean : the Curse of the Black Pearl ”, “ 'Lion king’ or ‘Lyon king’ “, “ The Streets of San Francisco ” and a “ A bug’s life ”…

My second gift are pictures from several of the next posts. Guess which ???...




Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Legend of Bagger Vance

I have never done military service. In France it used to be mandatory, but I didn't do it, because of a funny ( I think it's not the appropriate word) reason. Perhaps one  day, I will tell you about it...

So I haven't done military service, but yesterday I found myself in the middle of a war zone. I was on a golf course. Let me explain.

In your military jeep (or in this case a little electric car), you travel in all directions, from battle to battle. Each conflicts starts at the border of the  previous battle field and you must invade the new land as fast as possible.

To achieve this you have to be a sniper, estimating distances and the wind force, visualizing the target.... and pow ! 

Be careful !!!!! Sometime the snipers are beginners (or inaccurate marksmen.)Moving in your electric jeep is not risk free. Many white balls fall out of the sky like hailstones. I think helmets should be obligatory.

Often, a few ''snipers''  ''attack'' at the same time and in the same zone. But these snipers are gentlemen and attack in order, one after the other. Just like at the battle of Fontenoy during the Napoleonic war against Great Britain, when a French general invited the English army to shoot first (he was confident of the victory, he was French...), the sniper who shoots the furthest is given the privilege of playing first.

This sport uses similar military vocabulary.... For a difficult sand zone, the Americans use the  term ''sand trap'', and the Brits use ''Bunker''... All highly symbolic....

At the conclusion of this day, I wanted to say thank you to the golfers who were with me for the day. They were very pleasant, friendly and patient with me Perhaps one day I will do my military service and buy a golf club membership.

PS : In Fontenoy the French won. But perhaps because the Brits were poor shooters, but probably the French were just lucky...






Thursday, September 17, 2009

Usual Suspect

When I was a child, I regularly had the same nightmare. I arrived at school, all my friends were wearing strange looking clothes, and I was totally nude..... The absolute horror ! I had a variation of this nightmare. Everybody was wearing regular clothes, including me, but I didn't have on my ''normal'' shoes, I was in slippers... I'm sure, with my luck, when I was a child, I would have made this mistake, and it would have been a sports-day at school...

Almost a year ago, the nightmare became a reality but with one modification, (the most important,) I wasn't naked, thankfully, for you...

Halloween ! If you live in Europe, you can't imagine the importance of this day in the USA... By the end of August, you can find all your
halloween decorations in the different stores... three months before the date ! If you are a person who is panicked by deadlines, no problem, Halloween is the holiday for you, you can relax. Perhaps the stores are afraid to see a customer leaving with nothing, and disappearing on the horizon....

Why ? Why is this date so important ? I am a fan of crime novels, police movies, thrillers, or, when I am exhausted, even Colombo (it's not too difficult for my foggybrain.) I imediately pose the two important questions ? ''Cherchez la femme ?'' and ''Whodunint ?"

Having some doubt, I decide to forget about ''la femme''. I focus my mind on the tradition of halloween : The children don costumes of spider-man, pirates or witches and they make a racket around their neighborhoods for a few candies. If the costume is not scary enough to frighten people, the children do not hesitate to use threats. Trick or treat has hidden meanings ! Of course all of this is with parental approbation. The children are not alone in using disguises. The adults also dress up... and then process.... on a pub crawl ! Perhaps the adults could use the same stratagem as the children, and save themselves some money !

I scout around the streets discretely, submerging myself in the crowds while looking for a suspect... my usual suspect... After many wild goose chases and dead ends (and popping many pills for my headache,) I recognize them ; The fancydress stores, the candy factories, the dental and psychiatric offices.

One by one, I consider each motive and alibi.

The first supect, the costume store, hibernates during most of the year. Halloween has become essential for it's survival. This day is "the fix" of the book balancing. No, it's a "light-motive" !! Regretfully, my first supect is my first non-supect.

Next, the candy factory : Same motive but the music moves into a minor key. During this day the children are treated to an enormous range of new candies with legions of chemical flavorings. Perhaps they become sugar addicts for the rest of the year, increasing the profits of the candy factories... My instinct screams to me " This is too simple, the candy factories are not guilty... they are only the puppets ". But who is pulling the strings ?

My third supect is the affluent dentist. He rubs his hands in anticipation of huge cavities in baby and adult teeth. Candy is a meal ticket... So evident it must be true. However the country is littered with vending machines selling sugary-soda, in railway station, schools, movies theaters... So he doesn't need Halloween to get bucks and be scared...

So, after this reflection, my mind becomes clear, the guilty party is... Not Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candle stick but... the psychiatrist in the street with the candies !

Psychiatrists use Halloween to secure the loyalty of the patients starting in childhood providing years of steady income. For the children, the terrror of witches, monsters and ghouls is insidiously translated into their spirit. It's the fuel for the future nervous breakdown. In adults the tradition of the costume feeds their fears and allows the multiple personalities to flourish and fill up the pychiatrists'appointment book. Now the cherry on the cake. When the adult becomes old, all these fears are still present, and the most terrifying monster is the child on Halloween night. Indeed the old person remember his own despicable behaviour on Halloween nights when he was a child, harrassing older people and terrorising the vulnerable.

To conclude my theory, I am sure that the psychiatric's mafia rent a private town house over looking the parade to see if the year will be profitable or not...

Anyways it's a perfect day to shoot pictures with excited people happy to share the fun and show off their costumes and creations.