Saturday 9/30-Sunday 10/1: My first weekend in Paris was kind of a bust. On Saturday night I was supposed to go out with Laura to meet some other American grad students. She took a nap in the afternoon, and I decided to go exploring. We planned to meet at Place de l’Odéon at 7:00. Well, I wasn’t too far from Place de l’Odéon at 6:45, but all of sudden it started pouring rain, so I took refuge in a Metro station briefly. The rain let up, and I ventured out to try to find my way. It turned out that I walked in the wrong direction entirely. Then it started pouring again and I stood in a doorway for a while. I finally got to Place de l’Odéon around 7:45. There were a lot of people going into the theatre for a show that started at 8:00. (Side note: the streets near the bigger theatres are mostly named after playwrights. Rue Corneille and Rue Racine are near the Odéon. Rue Molière is by the Comédie-Française, and the Opéra-Comique is on Rue Marivaux.) I stood around there until everyone had gone inside, correctly figuring that I had missed Laura and company. When she got home later that night, we lamented our lack of cell phones. But I still haven’t gone to get one yet. I’m beginning to understand why Jacob doesn’t have one. It’s sort of nice to be able to disappear completely.

After the rain and the missed rendezvous, I wandered up to the Marais. I discovered the Centre Pompidou, which I enjoyed very much. I was hungry, so I went to a Kebab place and ordered a “sandwich Grec,” which is similar to gyros. It came with fries. I was full before I finished the sandwich, so I asked to have it wrapped “à emporter.” The waiter picked up the rest of my sandwich with his bare hands and took it over to the grill to wrap in foil. The owner, who had gone outside for a cigarette, came back in and said, “What, it wasn’t good?” And I said, “Oui,” it was very good, but I wanted to take the leftovers home for lunch tomorrow. I was a little bit annoyed with myself for saying “Oui” instead of “Si,” which would have been the correct affirmative response to his negative question.

Sunday evening Laura and I had a visit from a guy named Aurélien, who was hitting on Laura quite aggressively. He had interesting things to say about the upcoming French elections, and how Sarkozy won’t win because Chirac, and by extension the conservative party machinery, isn’t supporting him. He also thought Sarkozy’s anti-immigration stance wouldn’t play well because “Sarkozy” is very clearly not a French last name. Based on the right wing being split, and the fact that he thinks people will be excited to vote for a woman, Aurelien predicted an easy victory for Segolene Royal.

I haven’t been following the French news so much as I’ve been watching French game shows. There is a whole block of them from 5:00 PM to around 7:00 PM every weekday. The first one is called La Cible (The Target ...I vaguely remember an American gameshow called Bullseye and can't help but wonder if they are related). It involves people listing things that fit in a particular category. Like “adjectives that start with R.” In the second round the host lists three things and you have to figure out what the category is and then list more things that belong. Verb conjugations come up a lot. I can do pretty well with those. Teams get eliminated along the way until the final round, which involves bidding on a contract. The bonus round is complicated. My favorite thing about this show is that after each category they pan to an “expert” who is set up in a study like the narrator from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he tells the contestants other things they could have listed. He also flirts with the host, and if the category was songs (songs by Vanessa Paradis, or songs that include the word “boat,” or whatever), he plays short clips of songs they missed, and the audience claps in unison and sings along.

Around 5:30, you can switch from channel 2 to channel 3 and watch Des Chiffres et des lettres ("Of Numbers and Letters"), which has terrible production values. There is a male host of impish grin and ambiguous sexual orientation, who looks vaguely like Dave Foley and serves very little purpose. This one also has experts, a female expert for letters and a male expert for numbers. In letter puzzles, the players take turns asking the letter expert for either a consonant or a vowel. Then they try to create the longest word from the series of letters they end up with. In number puzzles, they have to use arithmetic to manipulate several one and two-digit numbers to come up with a particular 3-digit number. Members of the studio audience all bring notebooks with them and work the puzzles along with the contestants. With the math problems, if the players don’t come up with the answer, the experts sometimes ask if anyone in the audience did. There is also a “Duel” segment, where the contestants try to be the first to solve puzzles sent in by viewers at home. The ending of the show is really anticlimactic. The host just kind of says, “OK. It’s over, and you have more points so you win.”

When I lived in Angers, the LeMénagers loved to watch Questions pour un Champion at 6:00. It’s still on. I think the graphics have changed a little bit. The host looks pretty much exactly the same as he did ten years ago. They start with 4 contestants, and the first three to get nine points move on to round two. They choose categories to try to answer four questions in a row. The two who do the best there move onto the head to head final, where questions start out being worth four points and gradually decrease in value as the host continues talking. The winner gets 500 Euros, or the chance to come back and try to win five times in a row, at which point they would get the big jackpot. They always decide to come back, and they almost always lose the next day. So they get an encyclopedia from Larousse for their trouble.

Finally is the French version of Deal or no Deal, which is called A Prendre ou à laisser (“Take it or Leave It” might be a better translation). I get the impression that it predates the American version. The American version is glossier, with the models and briefcases, but the French host, “Arthur” (one name, like Cher or Madonna) is prettier and more charismatic than Howie Mandel. The money amounts are in gift-wrapped boxes, and the people who open them were also potential contestants, one from each region of France. It is perhaps even more unwatchable than the American version, primarily because the contestant can run up and kiss the person who opened a box with a small amount. And they play upbeat music when the contestant is doing well, and sad music when the contestant is doing poorly. And Arthur is all sympathetic and rolls around on the floor in agony when the contestants inevitably piss away an offer from the bank.

I expect to spend less time watching game shows as my social life and my ability to write my dissertation improve. I don't think I will miss them very much.