Prizes!
The winners of yesterday’s guessing contest are Spicy, Viveth, Jimmy Ho, nina, Dlunch, and love2all. (Yes, I realize Jimmy didn’t actually say “that’s Paris,” but of course he knew, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew that he knew.)
As your prize I herewith present this delightful film of Edith Piaf singing “La Vie En Rose” — live! (Or else she was doing a hell of a job of lip-synching.) Because really, nothing says Paris like Piaf.
If you’d rather not watch Edith sing, here’s a visual tour of the city set to a recording of the same song. Frankly I think the compiler of this video chose some rather ugly pictures of Paris, but we can’t just live our lives inside a Monet, can we?
That’s not much of a prize for Jimmy, though, since he’s already in Paris and wants to leave. So instead, and just for Jimmy, here is “Belleville Rendezvous” from The Triplets of Belleville. Because, see, in the movie Madame Souza leaves France for Belleville. Yeah, I know that’s lame, but I frickin’ love this song.
Now, here’s the promised metaphysical part: does it cheapen the prizes that they’re available like this to people who didn’t actually win them? (See Workers in the Vineyard, Parable of.)
32 Responses to “Prizes!”
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Spicy says:
*Perfect* Thanks!
October 20th, 2006 at 2:41 am EST -
cicely says:
Love Edith Piaf :P I have a recorded live concert that I love to bits – the music as well as the crowd response. But….can I take this opportunity to ask a technical question?
I only have dial-up internet access and I’m operating windows 98 on a nobbled together unit. The hard drive is pentium II. (whatever that means..) Is it actually possible for me to play music and/or videos on this equipment? (I do have speakers!!) If so, are there certain things like windows media player that I can download for free to make this possible? I’ve had trouble trying to download ‘RealPlayer’, and I don’t know why. Not urgent, obviously, but if anyone can offer advice I’d appreciate it. I’m pretty much resigned to the idea that I’ll need to up-grade, so can’t be disappointed – only pleasantly surprised.
Anyway, I’m going to play my Piaf concert in honour of this fun diversion, and take a peek inside one of my very favourite books. It’s called ‘Paris Was A Woman – Portraits from the Left Bank’ – written by Andrea Weiss. Lots of lovely photos of women – many lesbians – including Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, Colette and more…and many very interesting biographical stories.
One diversion leads to another….
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cicely says:
Oh dear, I see I’ve been clumsy and revealed what should be unwrapped in this thread in the sidebar…my apologies…
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will says:
Since I did not receive a prize, I will match VS’s prize with one of my own:
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Viveth says:
Sweet! I’ve been to Paris twice, but it’s still near the top of my list of places to go.
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Mandos says:
Cicely: To play these videos, if that’s what you’re asking, you need Adobe/Macromedia Flash.
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave.....lternates/
Your problem is likely to be that you need better than dialup to watch videos, but if you have *good* dialup it may work.
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Jimmy Ho says:
As you noted, I should be hors compétition. I appreciate my own special prize, though, thanks a lot!
It is true that Belleville, a very multi-cultural area (among others, one of Paris’ three Chinese neighbourhoods is located there), can look like another country to strangers who frequent only the Champs-Elysées (I’m a bit curious, since I haven’t seen that movie and won’t be able to watch the clip before a few hours).
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Violet says:
Belleville in the movie isn’t a neighborhood in Paris; it’s an imaginary place somewhere in North America — perhaps a conflation of New York and Montreal. Madame Souza actually crosses the Atlantic to get there.
You won’t get that from the clip, though, which is just the Belleville Triplets performing the song “Belleville Rendezvous.” (With guest appearances from Django Reinhardt, Josephine Baker, and Fred Astaire.)
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Violet says:
Will, that Randy Newman song is magnifique. Everybody go watch the YouTube from Will!
I love the way he exempts Australia from the countries we’re going to nuke, because I’ve actually heard wingnuts talk that way. Australia, for some reason, is the one country that even wingnut Americans think might be worth saving. Nice kangaroos and beaches.
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Violet says:
cicely, just want to reiterate what Mandos said: the key thing you need is Adobe/Macromedia Flash software installed on your computer. Once you have it, then you will be able to click (or double-click) on the play arrow that’s superimposed on the video picture and the video will play automatically. No need to download or use a separate player. But the problem you will probably run into is your connection speed: the video is actually being fed to you (streamed) from YouTube as you watch it, so it’s all dependent on your connection. It might not work for you.
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Janeen says:
Thanks for the clips. We love Triplets of Belleville at our house. I’m happy to share our prizes. I still think will should buy me a ticket to Paris, though.
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Jimmy Ho says:
Belleville in the movie isn’t a neighborhood in Paris; it’s an imaginary place somewhere in North America — perhaps a conflation of New York and Montreal.
I see; I’ve only heard about the movie in relation to the Tour de France and some concerns about pachyphobic representations.
I never got into French “chanson” (Sotiria Bellou will always move me to tears, so much more than Edith Piaf ever will), but another song I thought of was Joséphine Baker’s “J’ai deux amours, mon pays et puis Paris”. -
cicely says:
Thankyou Mandos, thankyou Violet, and you were right about the dial-up speed being the problem. Funnily enough, if I keep returning to the beginning and starting again, I get a little bit longer un-interrupted each time. I got right up to 2.5 minutes with Edith and her audience. I’m not sure what the logic of this is, but then, a techy I am not.
I got half-way through the Randy Newman song too. Why save Australia? There are those here who would say OZ is already an American Theme Park. Randy was only proposing one in 1971 which is apparently when he wrote the song – if the lone commenter there is right. Maybe he’d been here and liked it, maybe something else like Oz being US allies in Vietnam?
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Mandos says:
YouTube videos start “cacheing” (pron. “cashing”) as soon as you start them. This basically means that they are trying to download the video faster than you play them, except in your case your connection is too slow.
Start them and pause for a while and it will download the whole thing. Then you can see them uninterrupted.
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Steve says:
Feeling in a particularly god-bag, wingnut hating mood, I turn to Socks. And what do I find?
My favorite city in the world, where I lived and thrived and discovered life — not to mention a clip of one of my favorite singers. I was a college senior in 1973 when I first heard La Vie en Rose. I had already finished two other foreign languages. But I learned French, went to live in France, had (have) a French son. My base was Nice, and it still is when I can get there. Now NYC.
My son remained a duel citizen until he was old enough to learn that France had compulsory military service.
33 years later it is still where I feel most at home.
So why is this relevant now? For the last 6 years I have been this close to taking the whole crew back to France for good. Chirac is a reactionary woman-hating sleazeball like all the rest, but I can’t deny that when he tells Bush to take a flying fuck, I swell with pride and actually play the Marseillaise.
Let’s not, however, get into the myriad ways that male privilege plays out in my adopted country. No one does patriarchy better, despite a glorious and vibrant feminist movement and despite being n the home of so many semninal (unintended bad word choice) feminist thinkers.
But that dream is over. I am staying here and fighting these reactionary bastards until I die.
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love2all says:
Thank you!!! I actually think it’s wonderful to share a prize, it makes it that much more special, ya know?
Well, that’s as deep as I can get tonight. I must open my bottle of wine and… epiphanize. I’ll let you know if I unlock the secrets of the universe. I might need something stronger than wine for that, though.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Paris sucks. Go to Austria. Austria sexist urinals
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cicely says:
Thanks again, Mandos – that worked. The time ratio to download appears to be almost exactly 10 to 1 (30 minutes to download a 3 minute song) with my 56k modem, but I can read other stuff while the download is happening. The sound is then right though the videos are slow and out of synch. I’m happy with that though – I do at least get to see them.
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Ann Bartow says:
Violet,
I cannot thank you enough for keeping an open mind about things.
With much gratitude,
Ann -
Dlunch says:
Thanks Violet,
I have got my prize a little late as I was fighting with my BSOD( just some new computer jargon I learnt over the weekend).Jimmy would you rather be in 新竹?
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flawedplan says:
Hi Violet,
I love Edith Piaff too, and have been enjoying your comments at other blogs myself this weekend, but off topic, have you heard from Chris Clarke? There is an ominous message where his blog was
System Offline
After family discussion regarding a commenter’s threat of violence against our dog, Creek Running North has been taken offline.
Maybe there’s been an announcement I missed, but I checked Punkass, Twisty, Pandagon, Dr. Berube and Roxanne and can’t find anything. I hope he makes an announcement that he’s okay, this sort of thing has me in a panic, it’s one of my quirks or triggers, but I don’t know, it’s so abrupt, and he must have felt threatened or unsafe, maybe something happened to him and no one knows?
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Violet says:
flawedplan:
I haven’t talked to Chris, but I was at Creek Runnning North last night so I saw the message threatening Zeke, Chris’ dog. It was in a thread about Ann and Zuzu and “outing” people (the Feministe thing), and someone pretending to be from Feministe posted a vicious message threatening to kill Zeke. Of course the person wasn’t really from Feministe, and another commenter in the thread said that he thought this was the second time this person had shown up to threaten Zeke.
I’m sure that Chris just looked at the incoming comments and felt (as I would) that it was not worth it to put up with threats from this person.
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Mandos says:
There’s a blogular outbreak of juju theorizing starting at Amanda’s…
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flawedplan says:
OK, thanks, understood. What a world we live in.
I read CRN on Sundays, and never comment, but it’s part of my weekend ritual, and this blew my mind.
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Violet says:
This is odd — I thought I’d replied to Ann but the comment’s not there. Maybe I accidentally navigated away before posting.
Anyway, Ann: I wish open minds were more popular these days, but they don’t seem to be. Benefit of the doubt, too — that’s a good one that seems to be disappearing.
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will says:
Randy Newman included that song on his 1972 album Sail Away.
It is just as relevant today as it was then. Perhaps more.
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Ann Bartow says:
Violet,
Again, thanks. If you hear from Chris, let him know that I would be happy to deploy all my scary terrorizing powers against the person threatening Zeke :>)
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love2all says:
I’m sorry to go off topic from the Paris glow but take a look at what the torture president has to say now (why am I not surprised?)
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richard cherry says:
what what what??? is this ann bartow dogs being outed as lesbians and former leaders of the liberal party in britain being shot? (ok i made some of it up) It sounds like great gossip and scandal and frankly that interests me more than pictures of any city or further diatribes on how far right your already somewhat right-wing terrorist nation is going. (Sorry – it would certainly worry me more if I lived there but we got our own troubles and will soon be seeing you all in hell.)
So a prtize (or perhaps a worm) for anyone who is kind enough to enlighten me.
Yours in a spirit of pure mischief. -
Jimmy Ho says:
The few hours became a few days, but I finally watched the clip for “Belleville rendez-vous” after getting (temporarily) outta thesis writing. I remember hearing that song on the radio. I understand the concern about pachyphobia, but I found the scene with banana-belt Joséphine Baker particularly disturbing. This is a country where people still don’t understand what is wrong with blackface (and where the only potential Black woman candidate for the presidential election, Christiane Taubira, the Guyane representative who wrote the law recognising slavery as a crime against humanity, has just been blocked by her party).
Frantz Fanon died way too early.
Aside from the caricatured artists you mentioned, there is also Charles Trenet, “le fou chantant”; he appears just before Django Reinhardt. Thanks again, Violet; my own relation to this town and country is a bitter one, but it is interesting to see how people with more distance feel about it.Jimmy would you rather be in 新竹?
Most definitely.
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Jimmy Ho says:
Speaking about women candidates, I thought you might be interested in reading Gisèle Halimi’s opinion on the current Hype about Royal (you can read French, I understand).
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Violet says:
Jimmy, thank you for the link and for identifying Charles Trenet. I wondered if that guy was supposed to be somebody famous, but I didn’t recognize him at all.
