NUMBER TWO: What I Learned in Paris

I realize that I completely glossed over (or rather, did not mention at all) my first few days in France. The flight over was a nonevent, but at least I learned a few things:

1. I can't sleep in public, and planes are very public. I was watching Rock of Love at the gym prior to my departure, right, and in this one episode, Big John woke up all the girls ("It's rock n roll, not rock n sleep") and I thought to myself I would not want the country to see me sleeping. So anyway, I woke up at 6:30 on the morning of my departure and did not sleep again for over twenty-four hours. I had been walking around Montmarte, where I was staying with a friend of hours, Isabelle, and she had given me the key to the apartment while she was getting her nails done and told me the passcode, 3641. I heard 2641. I fell asleep in the courtyard.

2. I'm not allowed to bring more than a few ounces of toothpaste, makeup, water, deoderant, etc on a plane, but I'm allowed to bring an iPod, which apparently has the ability to bring the entire fucking plane crashing down if I don't turn it goddamn off during take-off and landing.

So Isabelle (who lives in Montmarte, works for Air France, smokes like a chimney, and does the French Thing with the smoke more naturally than anyone I've ever seen) and I were walking around L'Ile de la Cité, and I heard this woman say to a man "...and she said, 'Oh really? Well, let them eat cake.'" WRONG ANSWER. RETARD. We wonder why the US is famous for being ignorant assholes. Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake." If anything, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau or maybe even Marie Antoinette's mother who said "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," which David Emery said means "Let them eat rich, expensive, funny-shaped, yellow, eggy buns." Just as a side note: the brioche I have encountered so far has not been funny-shaped.

And by the way, I put the gauges in. It didn't hurt, so when Victoria and I went to Nice today, I looked for some new ones. People thought I was crazy when I asked for glass gauges, and all the gauges I saw were fucking retarded, so I guess I'm the coolest person in France wearing gauges. Glass gauges.