trivia master

so today i had two awkward moments with two different dogs. i was sitting on the metro and this dog gets on with this woman. the dog is sitting in her lap, but is staring at me and keeps looking like he wants to run towards me. not in attack mode or anything, but he definitely seems interested. then when i was walking from the metro to my apartment a dog was stopped in front of me at the light and turned around and stared at me. it wasn't an evil stare, more like an admiring stare. even when his owner pulled him across the street he kept looking at me. very strange. this happens to me kinda often though. but i give dogs the same look that i give children when they look at me. it's a look that says "if you keep staring at me what i'm about to do will teach you to ever look at anything again." but i usually don't end up having to take any action.

so i've started stealing from paris, one museum at a time. i stole admission to the louvre for the second time in my life. the first time i was ever in paris i was 19. i went to musee d'orsay and the woman told me and my friend it was free for us, then added "you're under 18, right?" and we said "oh yes." so then we thought, "yay let's go to the louvre now!" so we went and the line was out of control. so we just started walking around and that's when i found a secret door. there were just a few people in line getting tickets, but we started to have doubts about pretending to be under 18 again. what if they wanted ID? so after milling around for about 30 seconds, i told my friend to follow my lead, and in we walked to the louvre, sans tickets. the whole visit i felt like the guards knew my secret, but if they did, they never said a word.

so fast forward, gasp, eight years, and i'm in paris again. i'm 27 now so i can't get a discount on anything. discounts are for the lucky ones who are under 26. BUT. my school made a mistake while typing up my ID card. according to the Alliance Francaise, I'm 22. so the louvre on friday nights is free for the under 26-ers, so off i went, and upon inspection of my ID i was granted free access to the louvre. it wasn't crowded at all, which was nice for me cus i hate other people, but it's so easy to get stuck in the louvre. you're never really lost, but the signs pointing towards the exit aren't always easily found. after about three hours of walking around i absolutely wanted to die. my legs hurt so bad and i think i had a layer of dirt on me from walking around outside earlier in the day.

i've started a writing workshop at shakespeare and company. i love being surrounded by overpriced books. but really, it's cool to be in there. i wonder if it's haunted. you can sleep in there for free if you work for them for a few hours, but there are no showers. and the place is so dusty. i would need a shower. there's definitely a weird mix of people in the workshop. at least i think they're weird. one american girl inexplicably develops a british accent when she reads, one pint sized man is inexplicably married, and one unfashionable woman who always has her hair in her face is inexplicably bitchy. i actually find myself disagreeing with the bitchy woman just for the sake of disagreeing with her. i think we'll end up brawling by the end. side note, if you want normally priced books (in any language!) go to gibert jeune, just two steps away at place st. michel. i love it in there.

i played trivia sunday night at the thistle pub and helped my team reach their highest place yet! we got third place. and it was all because of me. even they said it was all because of me, so it's not just that i think highly of my trivia skills, it's a fact that i'm good at trivia. i would like to point out that i, alone, got every single question right in the TV category. Here were the questions so you can play at home (i'm paraphrasing some of them):
who was the gay teletubby?
what are mulder's and scully's first names from the x files?
who signs off from his show saying "take care of yourselves, and each other"?
who used to write for the simpsons then got his own late nite talk show?
what is ross and monica's last name on friends?

i knew them all! i love television...

free museum day!

so today a small child touched my leg as we were both getting on to the metro and my first reaction was a strong desire to kick that child. is that bad?

today was free museum day in paris! on the first sunday of each month all the museums in paris are free. so what this means is, instead of waiting two hours to get into a museum, you now wait four. i chose to go to centre georges pompidou, cus i've never been before, and since i'm not the biggest fan of modern art, i would never pay to go here, since it is, in fact, a modern art museum. you may have heard of the pompidou center. it's that red, blue, and green building that looks like it's inside out. it's pretty cool, i think. so i get there at about 10:50 and i'm in the door at 12:30. these two crazy girls tried to cut the line, but got caught, thank god. i was standing in line and noticed this girl walking around who was wearing tight white pants, and absolutely should not have been. i then noticed a few minutes later she was right behind me in line, eating a sandwich right in my ear and emanating body odor. apparently the guard at the door saw her and her friend cut the line and made them get out. they were french but the guard said "i don't know what language you speak cus i just told you that you can't come in so why are you still in line?" it was great.

so i checked out the museum's public library first and wasn't very interested. the only thing that surprised me was the amount of people who would wait hours in line just to get inside and sit there and read. so i went on to the museum. there were some really nice works by picasso and chagall. i also really liked the paintings by rene magritte. as soon as i saw the name i thought of the paul simon song "rene and georgette magritte with their dog after the war." is the song about the painter? i've never really listened to the lyrics, but i figured it was just about french-canadians. i actually usually skip it when it comes up on my itunes. so i'm very careful about keeping my flash off when i'm in a museum and today was no different. my flash was off the entire time but this girl comes up to me after i took a picture and was like "no flash." i told her my flash didn't go off and she was like, "i saw it." crazy bitch. so i liked the museum. it was mostly pretty modern art that made sense and not just a white canvas with a big black dot in the middle that's supposed to symbolize man's inability to cope with fear, or something like that. i once went to Mass MoCA and one of the displays was just about 100 chairs set up against the wall. at the time i remember really wanting to sit down cus i was tired, but wasn't sure if it was art or not. i ended up buying two children's books in french from the gift shop, one about the circus and the other about the pompidou center. i don't know why i bought them cus i have no children, and chances are if i ever do (i probably should get over my desire to kick small children first), they probably won't speak french. i just think they're nice books. so i'll add these two to the other kid book i bought when i was here last time.

so i just listened to the paul simon song. i think it is just about french-canadians.