Somewhat Larger Insufferable Distractions - Part I

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Mes fatigués, mes pauvres, mes masses recroquevillées:

I know it’s been forever since I’ve been in touch with anyone, and though I’ve no long-term excuses, my short-term one is my increasingly bad mood brought on by recent and ongoing dealings with the infamous French bureaucracy. If the weather had been warmer last week I’d have probably found this latest phase of my Parisian Experiment highly entertaining. With the Bone-Chill Index in the mid-popsicles, however, the irrational inefficiency of Parisian fonctionnaires has kept me in a near-constant state of irritation, no matter how many times I chant to myself a much-recommended mantra about not taking these only-in-France experiences personally.

During my last visit to the States in November a man at the French Consulate in Washington was kind enough to grant me a “compétences et talents” visa, something they give to people they gamble might make some societal contribution of mutual benefit to France and the visa holders’ home countries. As with all long-stay visas, this one requires a visit to the local Prefecture of Police to obtain a residency permit —a carte de séjour—within two months of arrival, and as anyone who’s ever spent more than a few weeks here on anything but a tourist basis will tell you, the Prefecture offers a glimpse of the French bureaucracy at its Frenchiest bureaucracissitude.

I’ve read enough advice in memoirs of the Hapless France-based Expat variety to have considered myself equipped to avoid most pitfalls that form the basis of the genre, and of course that’s just the problem. I made the silly assumption that if I just read all instructions carefully and asked the right questions before starting the process, I would very simply become the first person in the history of French immigration law to get his carte de séjour with no delay and without a trip (or two, or three) to the pharmacy to buy headache remedies or tranquilizers. It even occurred to me (ever-so briefly) that, were I not such a lazy and undisciplined writer, the slim volume I would pen to describe the astounding simplicity and lack of effort by which I obtained my carte de séjour would stand out from others on the shelf, and in fact give way to a whole new literary genre: the Hapful France-based Expat Memoir.

I suppose it goes without saying after such ham-handed foreshadowing that things have not worked out quite as I imagined. As I’ve discovered, every story ever told about the endless French bureaucratic demands for trivial pieces of paper to be generated and copied and stamped and stapled and shuttled from one office to another so that they can be filed away, never to be looked at again, has been true. And the best way to experience it firsthand is to visit the Prefecture of Police. The volume of frivolous paperwork they generate would be jaw-dropping all by itself; what makes it truly hideous is that every request that a carte de séjour granter makes ensures that the petitioner will waste the maximum amount of his own time with no certainty whatsoever that the latest errand to find the most remote and rarely open office or the least accessible information will ultimately satisfy the ravenous appetites of the ever-masticating maws of French government filing cabinets—or, after finally satisfying one demand, that another will not have materialized while you were waiting in line on the other side of town to satisfy the previous one.

The Prefecture’s Web site indicates that as a resident of the 4th arrondissement I should report to the Prefecture on the Ile de la Cité, a 15-minute walk from my apartment. When I arrived, the receptionist there asked which arrondissement I lived in and then handed me a piece of paper with the address across town in the 17th arrondissement where residents of the 4th are to report (unlike residents of the 11th, who are instructed to report to the 14th), but not before making an appointment by telephone. The number being busy for three days, I went to the 17th where I took a number and waited my turn to ask if it was possible to make an appointment in person (or simply conduct the business at hand without an appointment) but was told that an appointment wasn't necessary because the type of visa I was issued required that I report to the Prefecture on the Ile de la Cité (the very office where the receptionist told me to report to the 17th). That office, I was told, doesn’t require appointments.

The secret, I was now eligible to be let in on by the Prefecture’s agent in the 17th, is not to ask the receptionist in the 4th where to report but to breeze past her and go straight to an upstairs office where, I find out only when I arrive, they issue not only cartes de séjour for holders of my type of visa, but also the definitive list of documents one should have known to gather before appearing there. This list, which is somewhat different from a similar list on their Web site and from the Washington Consulate (sources that someone who wasn't French might trust to be reliable for information needed before an appearance at the Prefecture), requests a birth certificate that must contain information one doesn’t find on American birth certificates. The woman who reviews the list with me so I can be certain I'm not imagining a reason for my frustration tells me the birth certificate also must be translated into French by an approved translator whom I can choose from another list that I must obtain by going to reception at the Palais de Justice, a few blocks away. When I show the woman that I have my birth certificate with me (as well as all other required documents) but it shows only my name and date and place of birth, but not any of the other information it’s expected to contain, and I ask her what exactly I should ask to have translated to meet the requirements, she shrugs and says she has no idea, even though I know—and she knows, and she knows I know—that she’s processed thousands of these applications in the past and therefore could easily tell me exactly what I need to do, which logically would be nothing, because: a) none of the information is vaguely relevant or useful; b) no one will ever look at any of these papers; c) in all likelihood no one would know where to look if they did ever need it; and d) no one cares.

The woman tells me that peut-être—perhaps—I could tell the missing information to one of the approved translators I hunt down off the list from the Palais de Justice, who could then write out it out in an affidavit, which I could then take to the American embassy to have notarized. (Surprisingly, the U.S. embassy does indeed provide notary services. They require an appointment, according to their Web site, the day of which I should arrive before the doors open and wait in line outside. From there I would be escorted through a number of security checks and take a number to wait to be called at some point before their close of business, although it is not clear—in fact seems unlikely—that the notary service the embassy provides is actually the service that the Prefecture needs or will accept.)

It is the woman’s word “peut-être” that I think of later while reading the nightmarish appointment procedure on the embassy’s Web site that makes me scrap that particular adventure, and now I am taking a break before I wade once again into the Prefecture’s murky waters.

À vos tours lors de vos numéros sont appelés,

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This story continues. Soon. I promise.

They Swat Flies, Don't They?

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Mes petites punaises:

As if the Bush administration hasn’t given Europeans enough American criminal behavior to complain about, the U.S. recently heaped yet another affront on this poor continent—in the form of The Fly, an insufferable new opera based on David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of the 1958 classic schlock horror movie.

Perhaps my bad reaction stems partly from having recently seen the video of a 2005 Live from Lincoln Center presentation of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and The Fly therefore suffers by such on-the-heels operatic comparison. (I can say now with all honesty, "I know Bernstein’s Candide, and Fly, sir, you are no Bernstein’s Candide.") It's not that simple, though. The real problem here is that no one, though heaven knows how many umpteen opportunities must certainly have arisen, thought to suggest that an opera based on The Fly is just, well, wrong.

Think about celebrated past musical stage adaptations: Man of La Mancha was based on the work of Cervantes; Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story drew from Shakespeare; Fiddler on the Roof from the tales of Sholem Aleichem; and the inspiration for Bernstein's Candide was, of course, the master satire by the great Voltaire. And though Victor Hugo and T.S. Eliot surely turn in their graves over the abominations of Les Miz and Cats, even those travesties of the stage were given a starting chance based on the quality of their source material. But to base an opera on a Vincent Price B-movie? Or rather, a remake of a Vincent Price B-movie!? You don’t have to know more about The Fly than that to know that even throwing in a leggy Ann Miller to hoof a steamy version of Cole Porter's "It’s Too Darn Hot" — or raising Maria Callas from the dead to sing "L'altra notte in fondo al mare" — wouldn’t convince a homosexual theater major on a good hair day that this idea had legs. There’s just no other way to state it: This mosca ain’t Tosca.

The Fly’s music by Howard Shore (best known as the award-winning composer for such high-brow box-office boffo as The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), never belies its Hollywood roots. The film-length opera is one long Hobbit adventure score, without an aria to be heard. And lacking any melodic verse, the players simply belt out a rambling dialog in operatic sing-song. You really haven't suffered in a theater seat until you’ve endured the repetitive sprechgesang of lines like "All hail the new flesh! The new flesh has arrived!" and an adolescent chorus chanting an explanation of how the lead character (whose hailed new flesh transforms him into half-annoying-human/half-annoying-insect) is learning to compensate for the leprous melting away of his fingers by sucking up his food and vomiting it back up as an unpleasant liquid—which, come to think of it, is exactly what I wanted to do with the pre-theater croque monsieur I’d consumed (in the traditional chewing-and-swallowing human way) for lunch.

Cronenberg designed the set, which with its high-tech "teleportation pods" (by which the story's hero mistakenly commingles his DNA with a housefly) and its grim grayness successfully confers upon the theatergoer’s emotions the director’s distinctive, depressive cinematic mood, and the 1950s-style costumes (by Cronenberg’s sister Denise) encourage the imagination to drift back in time and yearn even more for Eisenhower-era musical theater, a reverie broken only momentarily by the brief frontal nudity of the story’s protagonist after he sheds said threads to leap in and out of the set's genetically destructive machinery. (Thank God lead tenor roles requiring nudity weren't offered back when Pavarotti was looking for work between snacks!)

Among the program credits' big names is Placido Domingo's, as The Fly's musical director, although the sight of the crown of the famous tenor’s head poking up from the orchestra pit as he conducted provided a less-thrilling brush with celebrity than my chance collision a few weeks ago with Anthony Bourdain (or maybe just his doppelganger) when I took a short-cut through an alley and tripped over the chain-smoking chef as he sat enjoying a cigarette amidst the fetid dumpsters behind a schmancy Champs Elysées restaurant. If Domingo's intention was to drown out the voices of the cast by sheer volume, he succeeded; I don't follow celebrity gossip enough to know if Domingo is known as a temperamental sort of fellow, but supertitles projected above the players in English along with their French translation lead me to imagine that the show's director found it easier to order up the English supertitles than to risk a temper tantrum by suggesting that the conductor tone the musicians down a notch so that the words the performers wailed could be discerned.

I know this curmudgeonly review is a break from the subject matter of my usual intolerant rants, but I offer it up as a warning to anyone looking for diversions when The Fly makes its U.S. debut in Los Angeles come September. If you don’t heed my advice and save yourself the cost of a ticket, I will have no sympathy when you cry, in the immortal, squeaky (and ultimately fruitless) last words from the original 1958 movie version, "Help me! Heeeeelp meeeeeee!"

Jusqu'à ce que la grosse dame chante,

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News from NeoBoHo

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Mes chers dissipateurs touristiques,

Unlike the subway systems of Paris, San Francisco, and other cities with digital displays that inform riders of the number of minutes until the next train’s arrival, Prague’s metro system tells only how many minutes have passed since the last train left. In other words, when Prague trains are running late, the Czech people can ask not how long they must suffer, but how long they’ve been suffering. This is a sad metaphor to inflict on the people of Bohemia as a constant reminder that the answer (regarding their history, if not their efficient metro system) is “a really, really long time.”

The most recent suffering, so it appears, is the result of the Czech Republic’s switch to a market economy after the end of Communist rule. Capitalism has brought the country an astounding number of KFC outlets, McDonalds, and gambling casinos, along with every other Western store brand you can think of; tourist shops are awash with Russian nesting dolls in Harry Potter, George Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and American football-player motifs; and the streets of Prague’s historic center are clogged with so many foreign visitors that it’s hard to find a seat in which to suck down a six-dollar espresso at one of the city’s many Kafka-themed cafes. Today’s invaders, waging their assault with tourist dollars, pounds, and euros, cannot be beaten back across the Charles Bridge with stones and swords as were Prague’s aggressors of yore.

Of course it’s too easy to poke fun at the over-the-top tackiness of any city’s touristic pandering—such is the stuff that has kept the worldwide market for refrigerator magnets and commemorative floaty-pens afloat for decades now—but Prague seems somewhat more damaged by the phenomenon, more over-the-top, and a bit sadder than other cities.

There’s no doubt that Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders offer Czech gastronomes a lighter, healthier alternative to traditional Bohemian cuisine, and I’m not suggesting in any way that the yoke of Sovietism provided a more desirable or beneficial economic paradigm, but wander a few streets out of the well-kept and upscale historic center and Prague’s outer neighborhoods still exude a certain Soviet je ne sais quois, with some soul-deadening architecture and a shabby, unkempt air that’s often downright depressing. Graffiti cover vast surfaces of concrete, and weeds grow from cracked sidewalks. Save for the lovely, lush gardens surrounding Prague Castle, the city’s parks have gone to seed and untrimmed trees and shrubs force Sunday strollers to duck or push branches away to navigate their broken footpaths.

High above the Vltava River across from Prague’s former Jewish ghetto of Josevof, skateboarders and graffitists have taken over the area around a giant metronome (designed by either David Černý or Vratislav Novák, depending on whom you ask) that replaced the colossal Stalin monument which once dominated Prague’s skyline before its destruction by Leonid Brezhnev, who in a fit of post-Stalinist spin control ordered it razed in 1962. (The massive Stalin monument, which could be seen from nearly everywhere in Prague, took 5½ years to complete and its sculptor, Otakar Švec, dodged attending its unveiling by doing himself in three weeks before the ceremony. His was a relatively simple way of getting out of having to look at the damned thing; it required 800 kilos of dynamite to finally remove it from the sight of Prague's citizenry.)



By contrast, Josevof itself offers a fabulous combination of Jewish-persecution tourism and upscale shopping amid spectacular—and spectacularly maintained—architecture wonders. Visitors whose attention wanes in the long queues outside Josevof’s many synagogues and those which snake slowly through the ancient Jewish cemetery can load up their credit cards at Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier between having their emotions jolted by the displays of artwork by doomed children at Terezin or having their hearts broken at the Holocaust memorial that honors the hundreds of thousands of Czech Jews who perished during World War II.

The Museum of Communism in the Nove Mesto district, which wryly promotes its address as “upstairs from McDonalds and next to the casino,” despite its relatively shabby and haphazard displays gives visitors a rather good history of the rise and fall of Czech Communism, most effectively through historic video footage and recreations of the classrooms, shops, and police interrogation rooms of yesteryear. It’s also a good place to find out the background of various historical landmarks, like the apartment building my friend Joanne and I stayed in on Wenceslas Square where Vaclav Havel announced the end of the Soviet era in a 1989 speech from the second-floor balcony and which now houses a well-stocked Marks & Spencer store for the well-heeled former Communist (or anyone with a few thousand extra Czech korunas burning a hole in his pocket).

For those who find the medieval charms of Prague’s oldest buildings not charmingly old enough, there’s good news come dinnertime: Doba Kamenná (Stone Age) is a caveman-themed restaurant in a basement in Nove Mesto where a young shirtless host wearing an animal-fur loincloth and face paint and dragging his knuckles on the floor leads you lumbering, apeman-style, to your table where he cheerily explains the ordering policy in a me-Tarzan-you-Jane vernacular: “You pick food from extensive menu; you pick drinks; you write food/drink choices on paper and pound fists on table, attract cavewaitperson’s attention.” (OK, that’s not verbatim, but close enough.) I was not aware of this, but apparently man learned to snap his fingers and whistle to get his waiter’s attention sometime after the Neolithic era. He demonstrates the proper use of Stone-Age #2 pencils and a promising fist-pounding technique and then lumbers off to greet and instruct new customers.

The restaurant is dark, furnished with roughly hewn furniture and decorated with animal hides, bones, antlers, and enormous tusks that are hung in rough sisal netting, the effect remarkably reminiscent of the fishing nets entangled with lobster traps and buoys that New England seafood restaurants commonly use to add a seaside ambiance.

The price of dinner includes a floor show whose story line loosely concerns a caveman named Toro and is acted out by a few of the waitstaff who grunt out the script in Czech (which to someone like me who knows not a word of Czech sounds surprisingly Paleolithic when spoken by a guy with his tongue tucked between his lower lip and teeth), although it is hard to hear much of anything over the din of frantic drumming by the three or four secondary players whose bit parts have no dialogue.

The menu, to simplify the ordering process, assigns IKEA-style nonsense names to all the dishes: Grilled tenderloin of pork in cream-pepper sauce served with mixed vegetables is “Býk,” Rib-steak with sautéed snow peas and roasted eggplant is “Pán," etc. Red wine, white wine, and beer are “Toro’s blood,” “Toro’s sweat,” and” Toro’s pee,” respectively; “non-alcoholic Toro’s pee” is available for Stone-Aged 12-steppers. (Mojitos are “mojitos.”)

A woman scantily coutured in simulated mammoth and Nikes brings plates of Býk and Pán and mojitos in rough clay cups, but no silverware because, of course, forks and knives would not be epoch-appropriate. The cocktails have plastic bendy straws. Every detail of the Stone-Aged theme has been attended to; a primitive roll of paper towels substitutes for the more-civilized man’s napkin.

Napkins bad. Food? Food good. Yum! Individually wrapped toothpicks, good! Take Visa? Good! But what does one tip in a place like this? European restaurant-goers aren’t as generous as American ones and, in France at least, over-tipping is seen as vulgar. Is it possible to be vulgar in a place like this? On the other hand, what is vulgarity in a city that sells “Czech me out!” tee shirts and Silvio Berlusconi nesting dolls and advertises Day-Glo performances of Cats under black-lights and abbreviated versions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni staged with opera-belting marionettes?

Back to anni domini and above ground, there is much of Prague to see nestled midst the Kurt Cobain and Che Guevara tee shirt vendors and street artists selling Angelina Jolie and George Clooney caricatures. Most of the attention to Prague’s historic architecture is paid to the more-ornate churches, municipal buildings, and apartments, but as spectacular are early 20th-century Cubist structures. The cubist movement in Czech architecture and furniture design borrowed from the style best-known through the paintings of Picasso, de-structuring familiar or expected forms into flat and angled facets. Amid Prague’s plethora of uber-fancy iron and stonework, the Cubist buildings don’t beg for attention, but to stop and admire them is one of the unexpected pleasures of Prague sightseeing, and a museum dedicated to the Cubist movement is housed in one of the city’s finest examples, the House of the Black Madonna, and inside the delightful building three large galleries tell the story and display examples of the most influential Czech practitioners of Cubist art, architecture, and design.

Another hidden treasure awaits the inquisitive visitor willing to search and repeatedly ask locals for clues to the whereabouts of the tomb of Tycho Brahe. The 16th-century Danish astronomer was buried in one of the interior support pillars of Prague’s old Tyn church after his untimely and rather bizarre demise in 1601. As the story goes, Brahe did not wish to offend Petr Vok, the aristocrat at whose home he was dining, by excusing himself to the little boy’s room before Vok had finished his chow. Apparently Vok was a really slow eater, and poor Brahe’s bladder burst before an opportune time between dessert and coffee arose for him to make a crotch-clutching beeline for the loo. (Talk about suffering! Oh, the humanity!) Brahe was a well-recognized man-about-Prague in his day, easily spotted by his false nose made of gold and silver. The sniffer his mom gave him was lost in Rostok before his arrival in Prague, sliced off with a sword by a man with whom he was dueling for the love or honor of a woman. (I’m unsure which, although knowing how polite-to-the-point-of-bursting Brahe could be, I’d like to assume he was defending the latter.) The relief carved in marble of Tycho Brahe’s likeness is a dead giveaway of who’s interred there, with his prosthetic proboscis clearly scribed in the stone. Had the carver who completed the tombstone not been such a stickler for detail, it would be easy to mistake an adjacent tomb for that of Brahe, as the bug-eyed expression on the face carved upon it seems to be of someone else in serious need of a whiz. Anyone who knows the sad tale of the noseless man’s passing from not pissing would be forgiven, by me at least, for any confusion.

Bons voyages,

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