California

La Californie, ses paysages de rêves, le trip complet. Petits aperçus de ces presque trois jours dans la Bay de San Francisco...

An old Buick... appel aux amateurs pour me dire le modèle ou l'année.

Dans les rues pavillonnaires de Berkeley, tout est calme et tranquille. La ville autrefois déchirée par des chevelus aux lunettes rondes et colorées est coquette, loin du centre ville du moins.

Coquette et... aisée

La vue de rêve, depuis les hauteurs on surplombe la Bay de San Francisco avec vue sur toute la ville.

More views...

Sur le campus de l'Université de Californie - Berkeley (UC-Berkeley). A classroom in the Graduate School of Journalism.

La bibliothèque de l'université derrière Paco & moi

on est à Berkeley.

Dans les hauteurs du campus

Des visages d'habitants de Berkeley-Oakland.

Ils ressemblent à des Européens, avec plus de diversité ethnique. on respire...

L'Arizona ou peut-être le Nouveau-Mexique

My home - My yard - My car. The American Dream.

Chill'out in Austin

Coups de coeur des dernières soirées...

Keep Austin Weird

C'est l'une des premières choses qu'on vous apprend quand vous arrivez à Austin: "Keep it weird". Franchement j'ai mis un bout de temps à comprendre ce que ça voulait dire (pas littéralement...) car ne connaissant pas la ville ni les Etats-Unis, n'ayant en d'autres termes aucun points de comparaison à part ma franchouillardise, je ne comprenais pas le concept de "weirdness"...

En gros, Austin est le refuge des "liberals" du Texas, on y croise des travestis dans les rues, des gens tatoués, des gens qui se baladent avec des pancartes "vive la peine de mort", d'autres qui proclament "Bush sucks" à coup de bumperstickers (sur leurs voitures) ou encore des gens comme ce gars au vélo bizarres parcourant les rues avec un écriteauy contre la guerre...
Enfin la weirdness ne se limitent pas aux slogans politiques. Ca vient aussi du fait de l'atmosphère "bohème" de la ville, qui accueille historiquement beaucoup de musiciens. Et aussi de gens à la recherche d'une atmosphère pas trop puante de républicanisme, friendly (comme la côte ouest) mais pas trop chère. on a donc des gens des quatre coins du pays (et non pas des quatre coins de l'état) ce qui crée un certains cosmopolitisme...qui reste tout de même très blanc, malgré la forte communauté hispanique.

Ici, le mini-golf "Peter Pan", qui date des 50's, an institution in town.

Interludes...chut

Pour eveiller vos matinees, fluidifier vos journees, relaxer vos soirees, c'est par la

Pour ecouter les ombres chinoises dansant avec le soleil estival, c'est par ici.

Pour voir la vie en grand, c'est par la

L'art de ne rien faire vs. l'art de faire quelque chose

It is good to laugh about oneself sometimes. There is actually some truth in this -and lots of craps too-

The Art of Doing Nothing
And nobody does it better than the French

In Paris, you sit in the cafe, like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Sitting in a cafe is one of the main activities in Paris. It's what Parisians do instead of working or jogging. They have a natural talent for it, the way Americans are good at going to the pool, grilling meat or driving interstate highways.

The crucial skill in a cafe is the ability to gear down, from second to first, and then down yet again to a special, Gallic gear that is nearly paralytic. It's a bit like being dead, but with better coffee.

The chairs in the cafes are lined up in rows, facing outward, toward the theater of Paris street life. Or perhaps it is the patrons who are on display. Their posture says: Here, look at us, full in the face, as we sit in the cafe so brilliantly, thinking our big French thoughts.

Like the other day, I was nursing an expensive thimble of wine in a cafe on the Rue de Something, near the Avenue des Whatevers, and to my immediate left sat a Frenchman in a pose so relaxed he might have been modeling for Toulouse-Lautrec. He was doing nothing, and doing it with panache. Between two fingers dangled a cigarette that remained lit even though he never did anything so animated as puff. It was hard to tell if he was truly drinking his glass of red wine; the level went down so slowly it may have been merely evaporating.

Why did he not try to achieve something? The cafe advertised WiFi, but no one had a laptop. This was not Starbucks. There was no American compulsion to multitask, to use the cafe as a caffeination station and broadband platform for another increment of accomplishment.

Conceivably I could have spoken to the Frenchman, but the language barrier is significant; I am afraid to attempt anything in French in a cafe lest it be incorrect both grammatically and existentially. Perhaps the Frenchman was dreaming up an elaborate sociohistorical theory, positing that human civilization has been in decline since the invention of the croissant. Or perhaps he was just enjoying the Latin Quarter, a section so old that I am pretty sure its residents still speak in Latin. The nearby Notre Dame Cathedral was built in the Middle Ages, when the European idea of comic relief was a stone gargoyle. Parisian commerce is quaint, which is to say, hopelessly inefficient, requiring that shoppers pay the equivalent of a charm tax. You go to one little market to buy your cheese, another to buy your jalapenos, another to buy your corn chips, another to buy your salsa; only then can you make nachos.

I had an urge to blast the Frenchman out of his reverie. "Excuse me, I'm from Wal-Mart," I could say. "We're putting in a superstore right over yonder on the Rue Dauphine. Gonna kick some serious retail derriere, ya dig?" Then, as though he could hear me thinking, the enervated Frenchman finally did something: He looked at his cellphone. Action in the cafe! He didn't make a call, let's be clear on that, but he studied the cellphone. It dawned on me: He was going over all the speed-dial listings of his mistresses.

Now we're getting down to business. Sure, he ponders the big Frenchy thoughts as he camps in the front row of the cafe, but he's also scoping out the Parisian femmes, who are tres magnifique! That is French for "bodacious." These women tend to be slinky and stylish and sophisticated, and they make American women look, by contrast, as though they just fell off a hay wagon. The femmes have an air of saucy liberation. You can imagine that they are writing Volume 4 of their projected nine-volume encyclopedia on les artes erotiques. They're on the chapter about the webbing between the toes. That lovely muscle tone in the upper arms? That's from all the time they spend on the trapeze. (Conceivably this is a projection from the tourist's subconscious: We've seen those subtitled films where a layabout Frenchman does nothing but smoke cigarettes and all the women take off their clothes.)

Eventually, I reached the obvious conclusion that the man beside me was a professional sensualist. It's a job that doesn't exist in America outside of certain Zip codes in California. For the sensualist there are long recessions, even depressions, as the economy of romance goes into a dive. One sits in the cafe and hopes for an upturn in the market.

I sympathize: It's hard work. A grind, at times. But it sure beats the heck out of doing nothing.

By Joel Achenbach Sunday, August 13, 2006; Washington Post magazine


Les photos illustrent l'art de "faire quelque chose pour combler le vide de l'existence", à Austin, Texas.

In the bus...

1:30ish on sunday.
Bus n°1 going northbound.

Eels live n'a rien a voir avec Eels on records. Ils sont vachement plus punky et noisy sur scène. Mais ça passe trèèès bien...

 

Eels @ Austin

Spéciale dédicace pour Hélène, et oui, Eels, le groupe mythique de nos années teens (ouais teens bien tassées genre 17 ans, en pleine ébullition hormonale) est passé à Austin mercredi dernier. c'était incroyable.
Ils nous ont faiun super show, le chanteur est tout gringalet c'est trop mignon, il doit m'arriver au menton, mais ils déchirent sur scène.
Ils nous ont passé des titres de leur nouvel album (2005) mais aussi de "Novocaine for the soul"...souvenirs, souvenirs... 

preuve en video

La preuve que j'y etais!!



 

"Islamic Fascist"

Mashood Khawar is a UT student. I interviewed him at the Austin Mosque on what does it feel when president Bush uses the expression "Islamic fascists" to describe the people who attempted terrorist attacks in London yesterday.

From my understanding, it seems the term "fascist" doesn't have the same impact here in the US than in Europe, where we use it very cautiously, given our history.

Listen (0:56)

I think it is somehow funny to see how the western population that seems so organized, so strong, so indestructible is freaking out like millions of ants since this morning. For a change, I will agree with the term “terrorists” when applied to the people who were about to put bombs on the airplanes. They are really creating a mess among us.
They are good. They are twisting our system and are making us become our own slaves.
Bush’s declaration today was as scary as the foiled bombings in London. What he said was that Americans are threatened for what they believe in. We, the government will protect you.
Chirac, au secours!

Splash!!

Fin de journée à la Barton Springs Pool, un incontournable à Austin. Il n'y fait pas excessivement chaud, car il a plu un peu auparavant.
Je suis avec Nicole, de Berlin, et mes potes Chris et David. On déguste le calme du mois d'août, pendant lequel Austin marche au ralenti.

J'aime la tête de ce monsieur bien en chair.

L'eau du lac, comme de l'huile. Et moi, en pleine réflexion...Ca a l'air intense.

Pauvreté

Quel bonheur ce nouvel appareil photo!! Un petit bijou!
J'ai pris ces clichés hier soir, soleil couchant. Bruit de la ville et chaleur moite.
La misère et la pauvreté au centre ville.
Les arrêts de bus sont des points de ralliement des outsiders. On y rencontre la pauvreté dans sa manifestation extrême. Rien de comparable à notre douce France. C'est moche, laid, puant, sale, gros, grossier, drogué, ségrégué. C'est extrêmement dérangeant de banalité.

Viva la Révolucion y el Amor, no a la guerra

Le Monde titre "la perspective d'un changement à La Havane auguise les appétits des investisseurs occidentaux". Je confirme, la passation de pouvoir entre Fidel et son frère Raul tient le haut de l'actualité depuis une semaine au sein des médias américains.

La première fois que j'ai entendu cette info, c'était sous l'angle de la réjouissance de la comunauté cubaine anti-Castro immigrée en Floride.

Les faucons sont là, près à décoller sur l'île de la mer des Caraïbes. Sur l'île des rêves.

Histoire de vous mettre dans la -bonne-ambiance, un concentré de good vibes, site perso d'un ami.
Soleil, sourire, douceur, plaisir, et Viva la Revolucion!

Lecons de l'histoire

One country bombed two countries. Such impunity might astound were it notbusiness as usual.

In response to the few timid protests from theinternational community, Israel said mistakes were made.How much longer will horrors be called mistakes?

This slaughter of civilians began with the kidnapping of a soldier.How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be allowed tojustify the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty?

How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be allowed tojustify the kidnapping of the entire nation of Lebanon?

For centuries the slaughter of Jews was the favorite sport of Europeans.Auschwitz was the natural culmination of an ancient river of terror, whichhad flowed across all of Europe.How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimesthey didn't commit?

Hezbollah didn't exist when Israel razed Lebanon in earlier invasions.How much longer will we continue to believe the story of this attackedattacker, which practices terrorism because it has the right to defenditself from terrorism?

Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon: How much longer will Israel and theUnited States be allowed to exterminate countries with impunity?

The tortures of Abu Ghraib, which triggered a certain universal sickness,are nothing new to us in Latin America. Our militaries learned theirinterrogation techniques from the School of the Americas, which may nolonger exist in name but lives on in effect.How much longer will we continue to accept that torture can be legitimized?

Israel has ignored forty-six resolutions of the General Assembly and otherU.N. bodies.How much longer will Israel enjoy the privilege of selective deafness?

The United Nations makes recommendations but never decisions. When it doesdecide, the United States makes sure the decision is blocked. In the U.N.Security Council, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2000.htm the U.S. has vetoed forty resolutions condemning actions of Israel.How much longer will the United Nations act as if it were just another namefor the United States?

Since the Palestinians had their homes confiscated and their land taken fromthem, much blood has flowed.How much longer will blood flow so that force can justify what law denies?

History is repeated day after day, year after year, and ten Arabs die forevery one Israeli. How much longer will an Israeli life be measured as worthten Arab lives?

In proportion to the overall population, the 50,000 civilians killed inIraq-the majority of them women and children-are the equivalent of 800,000Americans.How much longer will we continue to accept, as if customary, the killing ofIraqis in a blind war that has forgotten all of its justifications?

Iran is developing nuclear energy, but the so-called international communityis not concerned in the least by the fact that Israel already has 250 atomicbombs, despite the fact that the country lives permanently on the verge of anervous breakdown.Who calibrates the universal dangerometer?

Was Iran the country that droppedatomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

In the age of globalization, the right to express is less powerful than theright to apply pressure. To justify the illegal occupation of Palestinianterritory, war is called peace. The Israelis are patriots, and thePalestinians are terrorists, and terrorists sow universal alarm.
How much longer will the media broadcast fear instead of news?

The slaughter happening today, which is not the first and I fear will not bethe last, is happening in silence. Has the world gone deaf?

How much longer will the outcry of the outraged be sounded on a bell ofstraw?

The bombing is killing children, more than a third of the victims.Those who dare denounce this murder are called anti-Semites.How much longer will the critics of state terrorism be consideredanti-Semites?

How much longer will we accept this grotesque form of extortion?

Are the Jews who are horrified by what is being done in their nameanti-Semites?

Are there not Arab voices that defend a Palestinian homelandbut condemn fundamentalist insanity?

Terrorists resemble one another: state terrorists, respectable members ofgovernment, and private terrorists, madmen acting alone or in thoseorganized in groups hard at work since the Cold War battling communisttotalitarianism. All act in the name of various gods, whether God, Allah, orJehovah.
How much longer will we ignore that fact that all terrorists scorn humanlife and feed off of one another?

Isn't it clear that in the war between Israel and Hezbollah, it is thecivilians, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli, who are dying?

And isn't it clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the invasion ofGaza and Lebanon are the incubators of hatred, producing fanatic afterfanatic after fanatic?

We are the only species of animal that specializes in mutual extermination.We devote $2.5 billion per day to military spending. Misery and war arechildren of the same father.How much longer will we accept that this world so in love with death is theonly world possible?

Par Eduardo Galeano, journaliste uruguayen - traduit de l'espagnol

Friday morning, it's about 9, I gotta go to work. Attend the meeting at 9:15, during which story ideas will be pitched. Start writing the rundown, that gathers and gives an oveview of all the stories that will be developed toay. And eventually do my own shit: do my stories, voice'em,put them online...

Je suis en plein dans la partie "acquis de l'expérience; savoirs et savoirs-faire" de mon rapport...
dur dur!!

Other than that, I've got good news, I purchased yesterday a used camera. Same brand than previous -stolen- one, a Canon, but upgraded. It is a blast to take pictures with!!

Swamped in my thesis

Je ne suis pas tres prolixe ces derniers temps, en gros je suis partagee entre mon stage qui est vraiment top, et mon memoire auquel je me mets avec tres peu d'enthousiasme...!
Plus de news ecrites et en images bientot...