Je connais "les inconnus"

Annemarie had an inconnus party this evening. Which meant first we sat around in the living room eating hors d'oeuvres and talking. Then we stood around eating pizza (with pitted olives), quiche (the two tend to fall in the same category of "tarte" here.) and salade, after which I entertained everyone by popping popcorn in the microwave.

Then went to the basement (la cave) armed with drinks, a chocolate cake (fondant, which is kinda brownie-like) and these little lemon tarts to watch les inconnus, a French sketch comedy group, on their projector. We would have watched it on her wall, but she had a screen. She brought down a fruit salade later, to cleanse the palate. The girl's in college, I don't know where she finds the time to prepare all of this! But it was really good.

Tidbits of les inconnus

"Jean Claude van Damme" as Jean Valjean

"Sylvester Stallone" in "Jesus II- the return (more making fun of the US than anything else. They eat hamburgers and ketchup with big obvious bottles of coke at everyone's place at the last supper)

A morning news show where everyone ends up falling asleep, except one chef, who ends up cutting off half his hand and sitting there with the big knife still in his other hand saying "I hurt, I hurt."

A song about paying taxes sung by vampires

This great power rangers parody.

Girl: "Oh, I'm nice. The mean guy is chasing me. I don't know why."

Bioumen: "We'll help. Why are you chasing the nice girl?"

(guy in weird bird-looking costume):"Because I'm mean!"

(transformation scenes.)

"Bioumen": Don't worry. We don't like mean people either. We're nice too. (lots of karate chopping the air.)

Annemarie's currently doing some sort of practicum to be an elementary school teacher, and one day the teacher hosting her told her she would have to take her home later than usual, because there was going to be a parents' meeting. Great, Annemarie said being bold and ambitious. Can I come and observe? Sure! Except when everyone was there and the door was closed there was a mediator who made it clear that the meeting was strictly for parents- no teachers aloud. Apparently they were airing complaints (this happened to be a school in the banlieue, that is the suburbs, which is really the socio-economic equivalent of our inner city, whereas here the inner city tends to be the nice place to live. Go fig. In short- the school wasn't in a nice neighborhood). Someone mentioned to Annemarie that she hadn't been at the last meeting and that she should introduce herself. Oh, no no, I'm not a parent, Annemarie protests. Oh, but you're going to be, someone suggests. No, says Annemarie, looking down at her flat stomach. Then she explains what she is doing there. The mediator is not happy, but the parents want them to stay. Fine, if you're all unanimous about her being here the mediator relents. Then all the parents procede to roast Annemarie's host teacher in very colorful language. Apparently the meeting is all about her. Annemarie, very brave, though feeling she might be risking her life, stands up for her as best she can.

Coming home we passed a woman in a long fur coat on the corner. She kept going up to cars. I think she was a prostitute. I think it's legal here. I tried smiling at her. She had very sad looking eyes. I think they're only around very late on Saturday nights.

It seems France is a place of conflict, and they like it that way. One of the teachers at my school keeps trying to teach me all about lots of social issues, and he says that's the only way anyone gets anything done. A poor person doesn't like his conditions, so he gets together with other poor people and they call the rich people on the carpet. Or the rich people invite lots of people over for cake, and the bigger the cake the have, the smaller they cut the slices for everyone. So poor people have to get together and recut the slices. This is how he explains it to me.